In the late Middle Ages, most poetry was written in Latin, accessible only to the most educated readers; in De vulgari eloquentia (On Eloquence in the Vernacular), however, Dante defended use of the vernacular in literature. He would even write in the Tuscan dialect for works such as The New Life (1295) and the Divine Comedy; this highly unorthodox choice set a precedent that important later Italian writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio would follow. Dante was instrumental in establishing the literature of Italy, and his depictions of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven provided inspiration for the larger body of Western art.[3][4] He is cited as an influence on John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer and Alfred Tennyson, among many others. In addition, the first use of the interlocking three-line rhyme scheme, or the terza rima, is attributed to him; in Italy, he is often referred to as il Sommo Poeta ("the Supreme Poet") and il Poeta; he, Petrarch, and Boccaccio are also called "the three fountains" or "the three crowns".

Contents

Dante was born in Florence, Republic of Florence, present-day Italy, the exact date of his birth is unknown, although it is generally believed to be around 1265. This can be deduced from autobiographic allusions in the Divine Comedy. Its first section, the Inferno, begins, "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita" ("Midway upon the journey of our life"), implying that Dante was around 35 years old, since the average lifespan according to the Bible (Psalm 89:10, Vulgate) is 70 years; and since his imaginary travel to the nether world took place in 1300, he was most probably born around 1265. Some verses of the Paradiso section of the Divine Comedy also provide a possible clue that he was born under the sign of Gemini: "As I revolved with the eternal twins, I saw revealed, from hills to river outlets, the threshing-floor that makes us so ferocious" (XXII 151–154). In 1265, the sun was in Gemini between approximately May 11 and June 11 (Julian calendar).[5]

Portrait of Dante, from a fresco in the Palazzo dei Giudici, Florence

Dante claimed that his family descended from the ancient Romans (Inferno, XV, 76), but the earliest relative he could mention by name was Cacciaguida degli Elisei (Paradiso, XV, 135), born no earlier than about 1100. Dante's father, Alaghiero[6] or Alighiero di Bellincione, was a White Guelph who suffered no reprisals after the Ghibellines won the Battle of Montaperti in the middle of the 13th century. This suggests that Alighiero or his family may have enjoyed some protective prestige and status, although some suggest that the politically inactive Alighiero was of such low standing that he was not considered worth exiling.[7]

Dante's family was loyal to the Guelphs, a political alliance that supported the Papacy and which was involved in complex opposition to the Ghibellines, who were backed by the Holy Roman Emperor, the poet's mother was Bella, likely a member of the Abati family.[6] She died when Dante was not yet ten years old, and Alighiero soon married again, to Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi, it is uncertain whether he really married her, since widowers were socially limited in such matters, but this woman definitely bore him two children, Dante's half-brother Francesco and half-sister Tana (Gaetana). When Dante was 12, he was promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, daughter of Manetto Donati, member of the powerful Donati family.[6] Contracting marriages at this early age was quite common and involved a formal ceremony, including contracts signed before a notary, but by this time Dante had fallen in love with another, Beatrice Portinari (known also as Bice), whom he first met when he was only nine. Years after his marriage to Gemma he claims to have met Beatrice again; he wrote several sonnets to Beatrice but never mentioned Gemma in any of his poems. The exact date of his marriage is not known: the only certain information is that, before his exile in 1301, he had three children (Pietro, Jacopo and Antonia).[6]

Dante in Verona, by Antonio Cotti

Dante fought with the Guelph cavalry at the Battle of Campaldino (June 11, 1289).[8] This victory brought about a reformation of the Florentine constitution. To take any part in public life, one had to enroll in one of the city's many commercial or artisan guilds, so Dante entered the Physicians' and Apothecaries' Guild; in the following years, his name is occasionally recorded as speaking or voting in the various councils of the republic. A substantial portion of minutes from such meetings in the years 1298–1300 was lost, however, so the true extent of Dante's participation in the city's councils is uncertain.

Gemma bore Dante several children, although several others subsequently claimed to be his offspring, it is likely that only Jacopo, Pietro, Giovanni, and Antonia were his actual children. Antonia later became a nun, taking the name Sister Beatrice.

Not much is known about Dante's education; he presumably studied at home or in a chapter school attached to a church or monastery in Florence. It is known that he studied Tuscan poetry and that he admired the compositions of the Bolognese poet Guido Guinizelli—whom in Purgatorio XXVI he characterized as his "father"—at a time when the Sicilian school (Scuola poetica Siciliana), a cultural group from Sicily, was becoming known in Tuscany. His interests brought him to discover the Provençal poetry of the troubadours, such as Arnaut Daniel, and the Latin writers of classical antiquity, including Cicero, Ovid and especially Virgil.[9]

Dante said he first met Beatrice Portinari, daughter of Folco Portinari, at age nine, and claimed to have fallen in love with her "at first sight", apparently without even talking with her.[10] He saw her frequently after age 18, often exchanging greetings in the street, but never knew her well; in effect, he set an example of so-called courtly love, a phenomenon developed in French and Provençal poetry of prior centuries. Dante's experience of such love was typical, but his expression of it was unique, it was in the name of this love that Dante left his imprint on the dolce stil novo (sweet new style, a term which Dante himself coined), and he would join other contemporary poets and writers in exploring never-before-emphasized aspects of love (Amore). Love for Beatrice (as Petrarch would show for Laura somewhat differently) would be his reason for poetry and for living, together with political passions; in many of his poems, she is depicted as semi-divine, watching over him constantly and providing spiritual instruction, sometimes harshly. When Beatrice died in 1290, Dante sought refuge in Latin literature,[11] the Convivio chronicles his having read Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae and Cicero's De Amicitia. He then dedicated himself to philosophical studies at religious schools like the Dominican one in Santa Maria Novella. He took part in the disputes that the two principal mendicant orders (Franciscan and Dominican) publicly or indirectly held in Florence, the former explaining the doctrines of the mystics and of St. Bonaventure, the latter expounding on the theories of St. Thomas Aquinas.[12]

At 18, Dante met Guido Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni, Cino da Pistoia and soon after Brunetto Latini; together they became the leaders of the dolce stil novo. Brunetto later received special mention in the Divine Comedy (Inferno, XV, 28) for what he had taught Dante: Nor speaking less on that account I go With Ser Brunetto, and I ask who are his most known and most eminent companions.[13] Some fifty poetical commentaries by Dante are known (the so-called Rime, rhymes), others being included in the later Vita Nuova and Convivio. Other studies are reported, or deduced from Vita Nuova or the Comedy, regarding painting and music.

Dante, like most Florentines of his day, was embroiled in the Guelph–Ghibelline conflict, he fought in the Battle of Campaldino (June 11, 1289), with the Florentine Guelphs against Arezzo Ghibellines;[8][14] then in 1294 he was among the escorts of Charles Martel of Anjou (grandson of Charles I of Naples, more commonly called Charles of Anjou) while he was in Florence. To further his political career, he became a pharmacist, he did not intend to practice as one, but a law issued in 1295 required nobles aspiring to public office to be enrolled in one of the Corporazioni delle Arti e dei Mestieri, so Dante obtained admission to the Apothecaries' Guild. This profession was not inappropriate since at that time books were sold from apothecaries' shops, as a politician, he accomplished little but held various offices over some years in a city rife with political unrest.

After defeating the Ghibellines, the Guelphs divided into two factions: the White Guelphs (Guelfi Bianchi)—Dante's party, led by Vieri dei Cerchi—and the Black Guelphs (Guelfi Neri), led by Corso Donati. Although the split was along family lines at first, ideological differences arose based on opposing views of the papal role in Florentine affairs, with the Blacks supporting the Pope and the Whites wanting more freedom from Rome, the Whites took power first and expelled the Blacks. In response, Pope Boniface VIII planned a military occupation of Florence; in 1301, Charles of Valois, brother of King Philip IV of France, was expected to visit Florence because the Pope had appointed him peacemaker for Tuscany. But the city's government had treated the Pope's ambassadors badly a few weeks before, seeking independence from papal influence, it was believed that Charles had received other unofficial instructions, so the council sent a delegation to Rome to ascertain the Pope's intentions. Dante was one of the delegates.

Pope Boniface quickly dismissed the other delegates and asked Dante alone to remain in Rome, at the same time (November 1, 1301), Charles of Valois entered Florence with the Black Guelphs, who in the next six days destroyed much of the city and killed many of their enemies. A new Black Guelph government was installed, and Cante de' Gabrielli da Gubbio was appointed podestà of the city. In March 1302, Dante, a White Guelph by affiliation, along with the Gherardini family, was condemned to exile for two years and ordered to pay a large fine.[15] Dante was accused of corruption and financial wrongdoing by the Black Guelphs for the time that Dante was serving as city prior (Florence's highest position) for two months in 1300,[16] the poet was still in Rome in 1302 where the Pope, who had backed the Black Guelphs, had "suggested" that Dante stay. Florence under the Black Guelphs therefore considered Dante an absconder.[17] Dante did not pay the fine, in part because he believed he was not guilty and in part because all his assets in Florence had been seized by the Black Guelphs, he was condemned to perpetual exile; if he returned to Florence without paying the fine, he could have been burned at the stake. (In June 2008, nearly seven centuries after his death, the city council of Florence passed a motion rescinding Dante's sentence.)[18]

He took part in several attempts by the White Guelphs to regain power, but these failed due to treachery. Dante, bitter at the treatment he received from his enemies, also grew disgusted with the infighting and ineffectiveness of his erstwhile allies and vowed to become a party of one, he went to Verona as a guest of Bartolomeo I della Scala, then moved to Sarzana in Liguria. Later he is supposed to have lived in Lucca with a woman called Gentucca, who made his stay comfortable (and was later gratefully mentioned in Purgatorio, XXIV, 37), some speculative sources claim he visited Paris between 1308 and 1310, and other sources even less trustworthy took him to Oxford: these claims, first occurring in Boccaccio's book on Dante several decades after his death, seem inspired by readers who were impressed with the poet's wide learning and erudition. Evidently, Dante's command of philosophy and his literary interests deepened in exile and when he was no longer busy with the day-to-day business of Florentine domestic politics, and this is evidenced in his prose writings in this period, but there is no real evidence that he ever left Italy. Dante's Immensa Dei dilectione testante to Henry VII of Luxembourg confirms his residence "beneath the springs of Arno, near Tuscany" in March 1311.

In 1310, Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg marched into Italy at the head of 5,000 troops. Dante saw in him a new Charlemagne who would restore the office of the Holy Roman Emperor to its former glory and also retake Florence from the Black Guelphs, he wrote to Henry and several Italian princes, demanding that they destroy the Black Guelphs. Mixing religion and private concerns in his writings, he invoked the worst anger of God against his city and suggested several particular targets that were also his personal enemies, it was during this time that he wrote De Monarchia, proposing a universal monarchy under Henry VII.

At some point during his exile, he conceived of the Comedy, but the date is uncertain, the work is much more assured and on a larger scale than anything he had produced in Florence; it is likely he would have undertaken such a work only after he realized his political ambitions, which had been central to him up to his banishment, had been halted for some time, possibly forever. It is also noticeable that Beatrice has returned to his imagination with renewed force and with a wider meaning than in the Vita Nuova; in Convivio (written c.1304–07) he had declared that the memory of this youthful romance belonged to the past.

An early outside indication that the poem was underway is a notice by Francesco da Barberino, tucked into his Documenti d'Amore (Lessons of Love), written probably in 1314 or early 1315. Speaking of Virgil, Francesco notes in appreciative words that Dante followed the Roman classic in a poem called "Comedy" and that the setting of this poem (or part of it) was the underworld; i.e., hell.[19] The brief note gives no incontestable indication that he himself had seen or read even the Inferno or that this part had been published at the time, but it indicates composition was well underway and that the sketching of the poem might have begun some years before. (It has been suggested that a knowledge of Dante's work also underlies some of the illuminations in Francesco da Barberino's earlier Officiolum [c. 1305–08], a manuscript that came to light only in 2003.[20]) We know that the Inferno had been published by 1317; this is established by quoted lines interspersed in the margins of contemporary dated records from Bologna, but there is no certainty as to whether the three parts of the poem were each published in full or, rather, a few cantos at a time. Paradiso seems to have been published posthumously.

In Florence, Baldo d'Aguglione pardoned most of the White Guelphs in exile and allowed them to return. However, Dante had gone too far in his violent letters to Arrigo (Henry VII) and his sentence was not revoked.

In 1312 Henry assaulted Florence and defeated the Black Guelphs, but there is no evidence that Dante was involved, some say he refused to participate in the assault on his city by a foreigner; others suggest that he had become unpopular with the White Guelphs, too, and that any trace of his passage had carefully been removed. Henry VII died (from a fever) in 1313, and with him any hope for Dante to see Florence again, he returned to Verona, where Cangrande I della Scala allowed him to live in certain security and, presumably, in a fair degree of prosperity. Cangrande was admitted to Dante's Paradise (Paradiso, XVII, 76).

In 1315, Florence was forced by Uguccione della Faggiuola (the military officer controlling the town) to grant an amnesty to those in exile, including Dante, but for this, Florence required public penance in addition to a heavy fine. Dante refused, preferring to remain in exile. When Uguccione defeated Florence, Dante's death sentence was commuted to house arrest on condition that he go to Florence to swear he would never enter the town again, he refused to go, and his death sentence was confirmed and extended to his sons. He still hoped late in life that he might be invited back to Florence on honorable terms, for Dante, exile was nearly a form of death, stripping him of much of his identity and his heritage. He addressed the pain of exile in Paradiso, XVII (55–60), where Cacciaguida, his great-great-grandfather, warns him what to expect:

... You shall leave everything you love most:
this is the arrow that the bow of exile
shoots first. You are to know the bitter taste
of others' bread, how salty it is, and know
how hard a path it is for one who goes
ascending and descending others' stairs ...

As for the hope of returning to Florence, he describes it as if he had already accepted its impossibility (in Paradiso, XXV, 1–9):

If it ever comes to pass that the sacred poem
to which both heaven and earth have set their hand
so as to have made me lean for many years
should overcome the cruelty that bars me
from the fair sheepfold where I slept as a lamb,
an enemy to the wolves that make war on it,
with another voice now and other fleece
I shall return a poet and at the font
of my baptism take the laurel crown ...

Alighieri accepted Prince Guido Novello da Polenta's invitation to Ravenna in 1318, he finished Paradiso, and died in 1321 (aged 56) while returning to Ravenna from a diplomatic mission to Venice, possibly of malaria contracted there. He was buried in Ravenna at the Church of San Pier Maggiore (later called San Francesco). Bernardo Bembo, praetor of Venice, erected a tomb for him in 1483.

The first formal biography of Dante was the Vita di Dante (also known as Trattatello in laude di Dante), written after 1348 by Giovanni Boccaccio;[25] Although several statements and episodes of it have been deemed unreliable on the basis of modern research, an earlier account of Dante's life and works had been included in the Nuova Cronica of the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani.[26]

Florence eventually came to regret Dante's exile, and the city made repeated requests for the return of his remains, the custodians of the body in Ravenna refused, at one point going so far as to conceal the bones in a false wall of the monastery. Nonetheless, a tomb was built for him in Florence in 1829, in the Basilica of Santa Croce, that tomb has been empty ever since, with Dante's body remaining in Ravenna, far from the land he had loved so dearly. The front of his tomb in Florence reads Onorate l'altissimo poeta—which roughly translates as "Honor the most exalted poet", the phrase is a quote from the fourth canto of the Inferno, depicting Virgil's welcome as he returns among the great ancient poets spending eternity in limbo. The ensuing line, L'ombra sua torna, ch'era dipartita ("his spirit, which had left us, returns"), is poignantly absent from the empty tomb.

Italy's first dreadnought battleship was completed in 1913 and named Dante Alighieri in honor of him.

On April 30, 1921, in honor of the 600th anniversary of Dante's death, Pope Benedict XV promulgated an encyclical named In praeclara summorum, calling him one "of the many celebrated geniuses of whom the Catholic faith can boast" and the "pride and glory of humanity".[27]

In 2007, a reconstruction of Dante's face was undertaken in a collaborative project. Artists from Pisa University and engineers at the University of Bologna at Forlì constructed the model, portraying Dante's features as somewhat different from what was once thought.[28][29]

In 2008, the Municipality of Florence officially apologized for expelling Dante 700 years earlier.[30]

A celebration was held in 2015 for the 750th anniversary of his birth.[31][32]

The Divine Comedy describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso); he is first guided by the Roman poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love (and of another of his works, La Vita Nuova). While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for most modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and knowledge to appreciate. Purgatorio is arguably the most lyrical of the three, referencing more contemporary poets and artists than Inferno; Paradiso is the most heavily theological, and the one in which, many scholars have argued, the Divine Comedy's most beautiful and mystic passages appear (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa"—"at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).

Dante, poised between the mountain of purgatory and the city of Florence, displays the incipitNel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita in a detail of Domenico di Michelino's painting, Florence, 1465.

With its seriousness of purpose, its literary stature and the range—both stylistic and thematic—of its content, the Comedy soon became a cornerstone in the evolution of Italian as an established literary language. Dante was more aware than most early Italian writers of the variety of Italian dialects and of the need to create a literature and a unified literary language beyond the limits of Latin writing at the time; in that sense, he is a forerunner of the Renaissance, with its effort to create vernacular literature in competition with earlier classical writers. Dante's in-depth knowledge (within the limits of his time) of Roman antiquity, and his evident admiration for some aspects of pagan Rome, also point forward to the 15th century. Ironically, while he was widely honored in the centuries after his death, the Comedy slipped out of fashion among men of letters: too medieval, too rough and tragic, and not stylistically refined in the respects that the high and late Renaissance came to demand of literature.

He wrote the Comedy in a language he called "Italian", in some sense an amalgamated literary language mostly based on the regional dialect of Tuscany, but with some elements of Latin and other regional dialects,[33] he deliberately aimed to reach a readership throughout Italy including laymen, clergymen and other poets. By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression; in French, Italian is sometimes nicknamed la langue de Dante. Publishing in the vernacular language marked Dante as one of the first in Roman CatholicWestern Europe (among others such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio) to break free from standards of publishing in only Latin (the language of liturgy, history and scholarship in general, but often also of lyric poetry). This break set a precedent and allowed more literature to be published for a wider audience, setting the stage for greater levels of literacy in the future. However, unlike Boccaccio, Milton or Ariosto, Dante did not really become an author read all over Europe until the Romantic era. To the Romantics, Dante, like Homer and Shakespeare, was a prime example of the "original genius" who sets his own rules, creates persons of overpowering stature and depth, and goes far beyond any imitation of the patterns of earlier masters; and who, in turn, cannot truly be imitated. Throughout the 19th century, Dante's reputation grew and solidified; and by 1865, the 600th anniversary of his birth, he had become established as one of the greatest literary icons of the Western world.

Dante Alighieri, attributed to Giotto, in the chapel of the Bargello palace in Florence. This oldest picture of Dante was painted just prior to his exile and has since been heavily restored.

New readers often wonder how such a serious work may be called a "comedy". In the classical sense the word comedy refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events tend toward not only a happy or amusing ending but one influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good. By this meaning of the word, as Dante himself wrote in a letter to Cangrande I della Scala, the progression of the pilgrimage from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.

Dante's other works include Convivio ("The Banquet"),[34] a collection of his longest poems with an (unfinished) allegorical commentary; Monarchia,[35] a summary treatise of political philosophy in Latin which was condemned and burned after Dante's death[36][37] by the Papal Legate Bertrando del Poggetto, which argues for the necessity of a universal or global monarchy in order to establish universal peace in this life, and this monarchy's relationship to the Roman Catholic Church as guide to eternal peace; De vulgari eloquentia ("On the Eloquence of Vernacular"),[38] on vernacular literature, partly inspired by the Razos de trobar of Raimon Vidal de Bezaudun; and La Vita Nuova ("The New Life"),[39] the story of his love for Beatrice Portinari, who also served as the ultimate symbol of salvation in the Comedy. The Vita Nuova contains many of Dante's love poems in Tuscan, which was not unprecedented; the vernacular had been regularly used for lyric works before, during all the thirteenth century. However, Dante's commentary on his own work is also in the vernacular—both in the Vita Nuova and in the Convivio—instead of the Latin that was almost universally used. References to Divina Commedia are in the format (book, canto, verse), e.g., (Inferno, XV, 76).

^His birth date is listed as "probably in the end of May" by Robert Hollander in "Dante" in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, volume 4. According to Boccaccio, the poet himself said he was born in May. See "Alighieri, Dante" in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani.

1.
Tempera
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Tempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent, fast-drying painting medium consisting of colored pigments mixed with a water-soluble binder medium. Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium, Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the 1st centuries AD still exist. Egg tempera was a method of painting until after 1500 when it was superseded by the invention of oil painting. Tempera painting has been found on early Egyptian sarcophagi decorations, many of the Fayum mummy portraits use tempera, sometimes in combination with encaustic. A related technique has been used also in ancient and early medieval paintings found in several caves, high-quality art with the help of tempera was created in Bagh Caves between the late 4th and 10th centuries AD and in the 7th century AD in Ravan Chhaya rock shelter, Orissa. Tempera painting was the panel painting medium for nearly every painter in the European Medieval. For example, every surviving panel painting by Michelangelo is egg tempera, oil paint, which may have originated in Afghanistan between the 5th and 9th centuries and migrated westward in the Middle Ages eventually superseded tempera. Oil replaced tempera as the medium used for creating artwork during the 15th century in Early Netherlandish painting in northern Europe. Around 1500, oil paint replaced tempera in Italy, in the 19th and 20th centuries, there were intermittent revivals of tempera technique in Western art, among the Pre-Raphaelites, Social Realists, and others. Tempera painting continues to be used in Greece and Russia where it is the medium for Orthodox icons. Tempera is traditionally created by hand-grinding dry powdered pigments into an agent or medium, such as egg, glue, honey, water, milk. Tempera painting starts with placing an amount of the powdered pigment onto a palette, dish or bowl and adding about an equal volume of the binder. Some pigments require slightly more binder, some require less, a few drops of distilled water are added, then the binder is added in small increments to the desired transparency. The more egg emulsion, the more transparent the paint, the most common form of classical tempera painting is egg tempera. For this form most often only the contents of the egg yolk is used, the white of the egg and the membrane of the yolk are discarded. Egg yolk is never used by itself with pigment, it dries almost immediately, some agent is always added, in variable proportions. One recipe calls for vinegar, other recipes suggest white wine, some schools of egg tempera use various mixtures of egg yolk and water. The paint mixture has to be adjusted to maintain a balance between a greasy and watery consistency by adjusting the amount of water and yolk

2.
Sandro Botticelli
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Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, known as Sandro Botticelli, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticellis posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century, since then, among Botticellis best-known works are The Birth of Venus and Primavera. Botticelli was born in the city of Florence in a house in the Via Nuova, BorgOgnissanti, Vasari reported that Botticelli was initially trained as a goldsmith by his brother Antonio. By 1462 he was apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi, many of his works have been attributed to the elder master. Influenced also by the monumentality of Masaccios painting, it was from Lippi that Botticelli learned a more intimate, by 1470, Botticelli had his own workshop. The Adoration of the Magi for Santa Maria Novella, contains the portraits of Cosimo de Medici, his sons Piero and Giovanni, the quality of the scene was hailed by Vasari as one of Botticellis pinnacles. In 1481, Pope Sixtus IV summoned Botticelli and other prominent Florentine, the iconological program was the supremacy of the Papacy. Sandros contribution included the Temptations of Christ, the Punishment of the Rebels, thus Vasari characterized the first printed Dante with Botticellis decorations, he could not imagine that the new art of printing might occupy an artist. Recent scholarship suggests otherwise, the Primavera was painted for Lorenzos townhouse in Florence, by 1499, both had been installed at Castello. In these works, the influence of Gothic realism is tempered by Botticellis study of the antique, but if the painterly means may be understood, the subjects themselves remain fascinating for their ambiguity. The complex meanings of these continue to receive widespread scholarly attention, mainly focusing on the poetry. The works do not illustrate particular texts, rather, each relies upon several texts for its significance, of their beauty, characterized by Vasari as exemplifying grace and by John Ruskin as possessing linear rhythm, there can be no doubt. The pictures feature Botticellis linear style emphasized by the soft continual contours, in 1491 he served on a committee to decide upon a façade for the Cathedral of Florence. For this reason, persisting in his attachment to that party, Botticelli biographer Ernst Steinmann searched for the artists psychological development through his Madonnas. In the deepening of insight and expression in the rendering of Marys physiognomy, Botticelli was already little employed in 1502. In 1504 he was a member of the appointed to decide where Michelangelos David would be placed. After his death, his reputation was eclipsed longer and more thoroughly than that of any other major European artist and his paintings remained in the churches and villas for which they had been created and his frescoes in the Sistine Chapel were upstaged by those of Michelangelo. The English collector William Young Ottley, however, had brought Botticellis The Mystical Nativity to London with him in 1799 after buying it in Italy, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood incorporated elements of his work into their own

3.
Florence
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Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the Metropolitan City of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants, Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time. It is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has called the Athens of the Middle Ages. A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family, from 1865 to 1871 the city was the capital of the recently established Kingdom of Italy. The Historic Centre of Florence attracts 13 million tourists each year and it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture, the city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics. Due to Florences artistic and architectural heritage, it has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, in 2008, the city had the 17th highest average income in Italy. Florence originated as a Roman city, and later, after a period as a flourishing trading and banking medieval commune. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, it was politically, economically, and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe, the language spoken in the city during the 14th century was, and still is, accepted as the Italian language. Starting from the late Middle Ages, Florentine money—in the form of the gold florin—financed the development of all over Europe, from Britain to Bruges, to Lyon. Florentine bankers financed the English kings during the Hundred Years War and they similarly financed the papacy, including the construction of their provisional capital of Avignon and, after their return to Rome, the reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment of Rome. Florence was home to the Medici, one of European historys most important noble families, Lorenzo de Medici was considered a political and cultural mastermind of Italy in the late 15th century. Two members of the family were popes in the early 16th century, Leo X, catherine de Medici married king Henry II of France and, after his death in 1559, reigned as regent in France. Marie de Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future king Louis XIII, the Medici reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I de Medici in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone de Medici in 1737. The Etruscans initially formed in 200 BC the small settlement of Fiesole and it was built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, intersecting at the present Piazza della Repubblica. Situated along the Via Cassia, the route between Rome and the north, and within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement quickly became an important commercial centre. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century, Florence was conquered by Charlemagne in 774 and became part of the Duchy of Tuscany, with Lucca as capital. The population began to again and commerce prospered

4.
Republic of Florence
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The Republic of Florence, also known as the Florentine Republic, was a medieval and early modern state that was centered on the Italian city of Florence in Tuscany. The republic originated in 1115, when the Florentine people rebelled against the Margraviate of Tuscany upon the death of Matilda, the Florentines formed a commune in her successors place. The republic was ruled by a council, known as the signoria, the signoria was chosen by the gonfaloniere, who was elected every two months by Florentine guild members. The republic had a history of coups and counter-coups against various factions. The Medici faction gained governance of the city in 1434, upon Cosimo de Medicis counter-coup against the faction that had sent him into exile the previous year, the Medici kept control of Florence until 1494. Giovanni de Medici re-conquered the republic in 1512, Florence repudiated Medici authority for a second time in 1527, during the War of the League of Cognac. The Medici re-assumed their rule in 1531, after an 11-month siege of the city, the republican government was disestablished in 1532, when Pope Clement VII appointed Alessandro de Medici Duke of the Florentine Republic, making the republic a hereditary monarchy. The city of Florence was established in 59 B. C. by Julius Caesar, the city had been part of the Marquisate of Tuscany before the death of Margravine Matilda in 1115. The city did not submit readily to her successor, Rabodo, the first official mention of the republic was in 1138 when several cities around Tuscany formed a league against Henry X of Bavaria. The country was part of the Holy Roman Empire. Florence prospered in the 12th century, trading extensively with foreign countries and this, in turn, provided a platform for demographic growth of the city. The growth of Florences population mirrored the rate of construction, many churches and this prosperity was shattered when Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa invaded the Italian peninsula in 1185. The Margraves of Tuscany re-acquired Florence and its townlands, the Florentines re-asserted their independence when Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI died in 1197. Florences population continued to grow into the 13th century, reaching 30,000 inhabitants, as has been said, the extra inhabitants supported the citys trade and vice versa. Several new bridges and churches were built, most prominently the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, the buildings from the era serve as Florences best example of Gothic Architecture. Politically, Florence was barely able to maintain peace between factions, the precarious peace that existed at the beginning of the century was destroyed in 1216 when two factions known as the Guelphs and the Ghibellines began to war. The Ghibellines were the rulers of Florence. The Ghibellines, who under Frederick of Antioch had ruled the city since 1244, were deposed in 1250 by the Guelphs, the Guelphs led Florence to prosper further

5.
Ravenna
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Ravenna is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy. It was the city of the Western Roman Empire from 402 until that empire collapsed in 476. It then served as the capital of the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths until it was re-conquered in 540 by the Eastern Roman Empire. Afterwards, the city formed the centre of the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna until the invasion of the Lombards in 751, although an inland city, Ravenna is connected to the Adriatic Sea by the Candiano Canal. It is known for its well-preserved late Roman and Byzantine architecture, the origin of the name Ravenna is unclear, although it is believed the name is Etruscan. Some have speculated that ravenna is related to Rasenna, the term that the Etruscans used for themselves, the origins of Ravenna are uncertain. Ravenna consisted of houses built on piles on a series of islands in a marshy lagoon – a situation similar to Venice several centuries later. The Romans ignored it during their conquest of the Po River Delta, in 49 BC, it was the location where Julius Caesar gathered his forces before crossing the Rubicon. Later, after his battle against Mark Antony in 31 BC and this harbor, protected at first by its own walls, was an important station of the Roman Imperial Fleet. Nowadays the city is landlocked, but Ravenna remained an important seaport on the Adriatic until the early Middle Ages, during the German campaigns, Thusnelda, widow of Arminius, and Marbod, King of the Marcomanni, were confined at Ravenna. Ravenna greatly prospered under Roman rule, Emperor Trajan built a 70 km long aqueduct at the beginning of the 2nd century. During the Marcomannic Wars, Germanic settlers in Ravenna revolted and managed to seize possession of the city, for this reason, Marcus Aurelius decided not only against bringing more barbarians into Italy, but even banished those who had previously been brought there. In AD402, Emperor Honorius transferred the capital of the Western Roman Empire from Milan to Ravenna, at that time it was home to 50,000 people. However, in 409, King Alaric I of the Visigoths simply bypassed Ravenna, after many vicissitudes, Galla Placidia returned to Ravenna with her son, Emperor Valentinian III and the support of her nephew Theodosius II. The late 5th century saw the dissolution of Roman authority in the west, Odoacer ruled as King of Italy for 13 years, but in 489 the Eastern Emperor Zeno sent the Ostrogoth King Theoderic the Great to re-take the Italian peninsula. After losing the Battle of Verona, Odoacer retreated to Ravenna, Theoderic took Ravenna in 493, supposedly slew Odoacer with his own hands, and Ravenna became the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy. Both Odoacer and Theoderic and their followers were Arian Christians, but co-existed peacefully with the Latins, Ravennas Orthodox bishops carried out notable building projects, of which the sole surviving one is the Capella Arcivescovile. Theoderic allowed Roman citizens within his kingdom to be subject to Roman law, the Goths, meanwhile, lived under their own laws and customs

6.
Papal States
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The Papal States, officially the State of the Church, were territories in the Italian Peninsula under the sovereign direct rule of the pope, from the 8th century until 1870. They were among the states of Italy from roughly the 8th century until the Italian Peninsula was unified in 1861 by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. At their zenith, they covered most of the modern Italian regions of Lazio, Marche, Umbria and Romagna and these holdings were considered to be a manifestation of the temporal power of the pope, as opposed to his ecclesiastical primacy. By 1861, much of the Papal States territory had been conquered by the Kingdom of Italy, only Lazio, including Rome, remained under the Popes temporal control. In 1870, the pope lost Lazio and Rome and had no physical territory at all, Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini ended the crisis between unified Italy and the Vatican by signing the Lateran Treaty, granting the Vatican City State sovereignty. The Papal States were also known as the Papal State, the territories were also referred to variously as the State of the Church, the Pontifical States, the Ecclesiastical States, or the Roman States. For its first 300 years the Catholic Church was persecuted and unrecognized and this system began to change during the reign of the emperor Constantine I, who made Christianity legal within the Roman Empire, and restoring to it any properties that had been confiscated. The Lateran Palace was the first significant new donation to the Church, other donations followed, primarily in mainland Italy but also in the provinces of the Roman Empire. But the Church held all of these lands as a private landowner, the seeds of the Papal States as a sovereign political entity were planted in the 6th century. Beginning In 535, the Byzantine Empire, under emperor Justinian I, launched a reconquest of Italy that took decades and devastated Italys political, just as these wars wound down, the Lombards entered the peninsula from the north and conquered much of the countryside. While the popes remained Byzantine subjects, in practice the Duchy of Rome, nevertheless, the pope and the exarch still worked together to control the rising power of the Lombards in Italy. As Byzantine power weakened, though, the took a ever larger role in defending Rome from the Lombards. In practice, the papal efforts served to focus Lombard aggrandizement on the exarch, a climactic moment in the founding of the Papal States was the agreement over boundaries embodied in the Lombard king Liutprands Donation of Sutri to Pope Gregory II. When the Exarchate of Ravenna finally fell to the Lombards in 751, the popes renewed earlier attempts to secure the support of the Franks. In 751, Pope Zachary had Pepin the Younger crowned king in place of the powerless Merovingian figurehead king Childeric III, zacharys successor, Pope Stephen II, later granted Pepin the title Patrician of the Romans. Pepin led a Frankish army into Italy in 754 and 756, Pepin defeated the Lombards – taking control of northern Italy – and made a gift of the properties formerly constituting the Exarchate of Ravenna to the pope. The cooperation between the papacy and the Carolingian dynasty climaxed in 800, when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperor, the precise nature of the relationship between the popes and emperors – and between the Papal States and the Empire – is disputed. Events in the 9th century postponed the conflict, the Holy Roman Empire in its Frankish form collapsed as it was subdivided among Charlemagnes grandchildren

7.
Political philosophy
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In a vernacular sense, the term political philosophy often refers to a general view, or specific ethic, political belief or attitude, about politics, synonymous to the term political ideology. Chinese political philosophy dates back to the Spring and Autumn period, Chinese political philosophy was developed as a response to the social and political breakdown of the country characteristic of the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period. The major philosophies during the period, Confucianism, Legalism, Mohism, Agrarianism and Taoism, philosophers such as Confucius, Mencius, and Mozi, focused on political unity and political stability as the basis of their political philosophies. Confucianism advocated a hierarchical, meritocratic government based on empathy, loyalty, Legalism advocated a highly authoritarian government based on draconian punishments and laws. Mohism advocated a communal, decentralized government centered on frugality and ascetism, the Agrarians advocated a peasant utopian communalism and egalitarianism. Legalism was the dominant political philosophy of the Qin Dynasty, but was replaced by State Confucianism in the Han Dynasty, prior to Chinas adoption of communism, State Confucianism remained the dominant political philosophy of China up to the 20th century. Western political philosophy originates in the philosophy of ancient Greece, where political philosophy dates back to at least Plato, ancient Greece was dominated by city-states, which experimented with various forms of political organization, grouped by Plato into four categories, timocracy, tyranny, democracy and oligarchy. One of the first, extremely important classical works of philosophy is Platos Republic. Roman political philosophy was influenced by the Stoics and the Roman statesman Cicero, Indian political philosophy evolved in ancient times and demarcated a clear distinction between nation and state religion and state. The constitutions of Hindu states evolved over time and were based on political and legal treatises, the institutions of state were broadly divided into governance, administration, defense, law and order. Mantranga, the governing body of these states, consisted of the King, Prime Minister, Commander in chief of army. The Prime Minister headed the committee of ministers along with head of executive, chanakya, 4th century BC Indian political philosopher. Another influential extant Indian treatise on philosophy is the Sukra Neeti. An example of a code of law in ancient India is the Manusmṛti or Laws of Manu, the early Christian philosophy of Augustine of Hippo was heavily influenced by Plato. Augustine also preached that one was not a member of his or her city, augustines City of God is an influential work of this period that attacked the thesis, held by many Christian Romans, that the Christian view could be realized on Earth. Thomas Aquinas meticulously dealt with the varieties of law, according to Aquinas, there are four kinds of law, Eternal law Divine positive law Natural law Human law Aquinas never discusses the nature or categorization of canon law. There is scholarly debate surrounding the place of law within the Thomistic jurisprudential framework. Aquinas was an influential thinker in the Natural Law tradition

8.
Late Middle Ages
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The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the period of European history generally comprising the 14th and 15th centuries. The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the modern era. Around 1300, centuries of prosperity and growth in Europe came to a halt, a series of famines and plagues, including the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the Black Death, reduced the population to around half of what it was before the calamities. Along with depopulation came social unrest and endemic warfare, France and England experienced serious peasant uprisings, such as the Jacquerie and the Peasants Revolt, as well as over a century of intermittent conflict in the Hundred Years War. To add to the problems of the period, the unity of the Catholic Church was shattered by the Western Schism. Collectively these events are called the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages. Despite these crises, the 14th century was also a time of progress in the arts. Following a renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman texts that took root in the High Middle Ages, combined with this influx of classical ideas was the invention of printing, which facilitated dissemination of the printed word and democratized learning. These two things would lead to the Protestant Reformation. Toward the end of the period, the Age of Discovery began, the rise of the Ottoman Empire, culminating in the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, eroded the last remnants of the Byzantine Empire and cut off trading possibilities with the east. Europeans were forced to seek new trading routes, leading to the expedition of Columbus to the Americas in 1492 and their discoveries strengthened the economy and power of European nations. The changes brought about by these developments have led scholars to view this period as the end of the Middle Ages and beginning of modern history. However, the division is artificial, since ancient learning was never entirely absent from European society. As a result there was continuity between the ancient age and the modern age. Some historians, particularly in Italy, prefer not to speak of the Late Middle Ages at all, but rather see the period of the Middle Ages transitioning to the Renaissance. The term Late Middle Ages refers to one of the three periods of the Middle Ages, along with the Early Middle Ages and the High Middle Ages, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodization in his History of the Florentine People. Flavio Biondo used a framework in Decades of History from the Deterioration of the Roman Empire. Tripartite periodization became standard after the German historian Christoph Cellarius published Universal History Divided into an Ancient, Medieval, for 18th-century historians studying the 14th and 15th centuries, the central theme was the Renaissance, with its rediscovery of ancient learning and the emergence of an individual spirit

9.
Mononymous person
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A mononymous person is an individual who is known and addressed by a mononym, or single name. In some cases, that name has been selected by the individual, in other cases, it has been determined by the custom of the country or by some interested segment. In the case of historical figures, it may be the one of the individuals names that has survived and is still known today. The structure of persons names has varied across time and geography, in some societies, individuals have been mononymous, receiving only a single name. Alulim, first king of Sumer, is one of the earliest names known, Narmer, later, Biblical names were typically mononymous, as were names in the surrounding cultures of the Fertile Crescent. Mononyms in other ancient cultures include the Celtic queen Boudica and the Numidian king Jugurtha, however the historical record of eg Boudicca is scanty, and there is no evidence that she did not also have other names. Between Columbus arrival in the New World and the late 19th century, examples include Moctezuma, Anacaona, Agüeybaná, Diriangen, Urracá, Guamá, Atahualpa, Lempira, Lautaro, Tamanaco, Pocahontas, Auoindaon, Cangapol, and Tecumseh. Uniquely, the Dutch-Seneca diplomat Cornplanter received both a Seneca-language mononym from his mother and a name and surname from his father. His later descendants, such as Jesse Cornplanter, used Cornplanter as the name instead of Abeel. In the 19th century, most chiefs involved in the Apache Wars had mononym birth names, and some replaced those with mononymous nicknames, Geronimo, Victorio, Cochise, and so on. Since the medieval period, mononyms in the west have almost exclusively used to identify people who already had surnames. These nicknames were either adopted by the persons themselves or conferred by contemporaries, some French authors have shown a preference for mononyms. In the 17th century, the dramatist and actor Jean-Baptiste Poquelin took the stage name Molière. In the 18th century, François-Marie Arouet adopted the mononym Voltaire, the new name combined several features. Arouet would not have served the purpose, given that names associations with roué, in the 20th century, a fourth French writer, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, used her actual surname as her mononym pen name, Colette. Some French actors and singers have used their name or surname as a stage mononym. In the 17th and 18th centuries, most Italian castrato singers used mononyms as stage names, the German writer, mining engineer and philosopher, Georg Friedrich Philipp Freiherr von Hardenberg, became famous as Novalis. In 2002 Multatuli was proclaimed by the Society for Dutch Literature to have been the most important Dutch writer of all time, the Dutch writer Jan Hendrik Frederik Grönloh wrote under the pseudonym Nescio

10.
Italians
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Italians are a nation and ethnic group native to Italy who share a common culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a native tongue. The majority of Italian nationals are speakers of Standard Italian. Italians have greatly influenced and contributed to the arts and music, science, technology, cuisine, sports, fashion, jurisprudence, banking, Italian people are generally known for their localism and their attention to clothing and family values. The term Italian is at least 3,000 years old and has a history that goes back to pre-Roman Italy. According to one of the common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The Etruscan civilization reached its peak about the 7th century BC, but by 509 BC, when the Romans overthrew their Etruscan monarchs, its control in Italy was on the wane. By 350 BC, after a series of wars between Greeks and Etruscans, the Latins, with Rome as their capital, gained the ascendancy by 272 BC, and they managed to unite the entire Italian peninsula. This period of unification was followed by one of conquest in the Mediterranean, in the course of the century-long struggle against Carthage, the Romans conquered Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. Finally, in 146 BC, at the conclusion of the Third Punic War, with Carthage completely destroyed and its inhabitants enslaved, octavian, the final victor, was accorded the title of Augustus by the Senate and thereby became the first Roman emperor. After two centuries of rule, in the 3rd century AD, Rome was threatened by internal discord and menaced by Germanic and Asian invaders. Emperor Diocletians administrative division of the empire into two parts in 285 provided only temporary relief, it became permanent in 395, in 313, Emperor Constantine accepted Christianity, and churches thereafter rose throughout the empire. However, he moved his capital from Rome to Constantinople. The last Western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed in 476 by a Germanic foederati general in Italy and his defeat marked the end of the western part of the Roman Empire. During most of the period from the fall of Rome until the Kingdom of Italy was established in 1861, Odoacer ruled well for 13 years after gaining control of Italy in 476. Then he was attacked and defeated by Theodoric, the king of another Germanic tribe, Theodoric and Odoacer ruled jointly until 493, when Theodoric murdered Odoacer. Theodoric continued to rule Italy with an army of Ostrogoths and a government that was mostly Italian, after the death of Theodoric in 526, the kingdom began to grow weak

11.
Renaissance
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The Renaissance was a period in European history, from the 14th to the 17th century, regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It started as a movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe. This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science, Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, the Renaissance began in Florence, in the 14th century. Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, the word Renaissance, literally meaning Rebirth in French, first appeared in English in the 1830s. The word also occurs in Jules Michelets 1855 work, Histoire de France, the word Renaissance has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century. The Renaissance was a movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism, however, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were back from Byzantium to Western Europe. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe life as it really was. Others see more competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance. Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in Italy, accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins. During the Renaissance, money and art went hand in hand, Artists depended entirely on patrons while the patrons needed money to foster artistic talent. Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding trade into Asia, silver mining in Tyrol increased the flow of money. Luxuries from the Eastern world, brought home during the Crusades, increased the prosperity of Genoa, unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval Western Europe. One of the greatest achievements of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity, Arab logicians had inherited Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and the Levant. Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way through the Arab West into Spain and Sicily and this work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in history

12.
Divine Comedy
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The Divine Comedy is a long narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c.1308 and completed in 1320, a year before his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work in Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature, the poems imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written and it is divided into three parts, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. On the surface, the poem describes Dantes travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise or Heaven, but at a level, it represents, allegorically. At this deeper level, Dante draws on medieval Christian theology and philosophy, especially Thomistic philosophy, consequently, the Divine Comedy has been called the Summa in verse. The work was simply titled Comedìa and the word Divina was added by Giovanni Boccaccio. The first printed edition to add the word divina to the title was that of the Venetian humanist Lodovico Dolce, the Divine Comedy is composed of 14,233 lines that are divided into three canticas – Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso – each consisting of 33 cantos. An initial canto, serving as an introduction to the poem and generally considered to be part of the first cantica, the number three is prominent in the work, represented in part by the number of canticas and their lengths. Additionally, the scheme used, terza rima, is hendecasyllabic, with the lines composing tercets according to the rhyme scheme aba, bcb, cdc. Written in the first person, the tells of Dantes journey through the three realms of the dead, lasting from the night before Good Friday to the Wednesday after Easter in the spring of 1300. The Roman poet Virgil guides him through Hell and Purgatory, Beatrice, Dantes ideal woman, within each group of 9,7 elements correspond to a specific moral scheme, subdivided into three subcategories, while 2 others of greater particularity are added to total nine. For example, the seven sins of the Catholic Church that are cleansed in Purgatory are joined by special realms for the Late repentant. The core seven sins within Purgatory correspond to a scheme of love perverted, subdivided into three groups corresponding to excessive love, deficient love, and malicious love. In central Italys political struggle between Guelphs and Ghibellines, Dante was part of the Guelphs, who in general favored the Papacy over the Holy Roman Emperor, florences Guelphs split into factions around 1300, the White Guelphs and the Black Guelphs. The last word in each of the three canticas is stelle, the poem begins on the night before Good Friday in the year 1300, halfway along our lifes path. Conscious that he is ruining himself and that he is falling into a low place where the sun is silent, Dante is at last rescued by Virgil, the circles number 9, with the addition of Satan completing the structure of 9 +1 =10. Having survived the depths of Hell, Dante and Virgil ascend out of the undergloom to the Mountain of Purgatory on the far side of the world. The Mountain is on an island, the land in the Southern Hemisphere

13.
Giovanni Boccaccio
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Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Boccaccio wrote a number of works, including The Decameron. The details of Boccaccios birth are uncertain and he was born in Florence or in a village near Certaldo where his family was from. He was the son of Florentine merchant Boccaccino di Chellino and an unknown woman, Boccaccios stepmother was called Margherita de Mardoli. His father worked for the Compagnia dei Bardi and, in the 1320s, married Margherita dei Mardoli, Boccaccio may have been tutored by Giovanni Mazzuoli and received from him an early introduction to the works of Dante. In 1326, his father was appointed head of a bank, Boccaccio was an apprentice at the bank but disliked the banking profession. He persuaded his father to let him study law at the Studium and he also pursued his interest in scientific and literary studies. His father introduced him to the Neapolitan nobility and the French-influenced court of Robert the Wise in the 1330s, at this time, he fell in love with a married daughter of the king, who is portrayed as Fiammetta in many of Boccaccios prose romances, including Il Filocolo. Acciaioli later became counselor to Queen Joanna I of Naples and, eventually and it seems that Boccaccio enjoyed law no more than banking, but his studies allowed him the opportunity to study widely and make good contacts with fellow scholars. His early influences included Paolo da Perugia, humanists Barbato da Sulmona and Giovanni Barrili, in Naples, Boccaccio began what he considered his true vocation of poetry. Works produced in this period include Il Filostrato and Teseida, The Filocolo, the period featured considerable formal innovation, including possibly the introduction of the Sicilian octave, where it influenced Petrarch. Boccaccio returned to Florence in early 1341, avoiding the plague of 1340 in that city and he had left Naples due to tensions between the Angevin king and Florence. His father had returned to Florence in 1338, where he had gone bankrupt, the pastoral piece Ninfale fiesolano probably dates from this time, also. In 1343, Boccaccios father remarried to Bice del Bostichi and his children by his first marriage had all died, but he had another son named Iacopo in 1344. In Florence, the overthrow of Walter of Brienne brought about the government of popolo minuto and it diminished the influence of the nobility and the wealthier merchant classes and assisted in the relative decline of Florence. The city was further in 1348 by the Black Death. From 1347, Boccaccio spent much time in Ravenna, seeking new patronage and, despite his claims and his stepmother died during the epidemic and his father was closely associated with the government efforts as Minister of Supply in the city. His father died in 1349 and Boccaccio was forced into an active role as head of the family

14.
Italian language
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By most measures, Italian, together with Sardinian, is the closest to Latin of the Romance languages. Italian is a language in Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City. Italian is spoken by minorities in places such as France, Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Crimea and Tunisia and by large expatriate communities in the Americas. Many speakers are native bilinguals of both standardized Italian and other regional languages, Italian is the fourth most studied language in the world. Italian is a major European language, being one of the languages of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. It is the third most widely spoken first language in the European Union with 65 million native speakers, including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries and on other continents, the total number of speakers is around 85 million. Italian is the working language of the Holy See, serving as the lingua franca in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Italian is known as the language of music because of its use in musical terminology and its influence is also widespread in the arts and in the luxury goods market. Italian has been reported as the fourth or fifth most frequently taught foreign language in the world, Italian was adopted by the state after the Unification of Italy, having previously been a literary language based on Tuscan as spoken mostly by the upper class of Florentine society. Its development was influenced by other Italian languages and to some minor extent. Its vowels are the second-closest to Latin after Sardinian, unlike most other Romance languages, Italian retains Latins contrast between short and long consonants. As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive, however, Italian as a language used in Italy and some surrounding regions has a longer history. What would come to be thought of as Italian was first formalized in the early 14th century through the works of Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri, written in his native Florentine. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language, and thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the language of Italy. Italian was also one of the recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Italy has always had a dialect for each city, because the cities. Those dialects now have considerable variety, as Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of Regional Italian. Even in the case of Northern Italian languages, however, scholars are not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages

15.
Vernacular
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Some linguists use vernacular and nonstandard dialect as synonyms. The use of vernacular is not recent, here vernacular, mother language and dialect are already in use in a modern sense. The figurative meaning was broadened from the diminutive extended words vernaculus, varro, the classical Latin grammarian, used the term vocabula vernacula, termes de la langue nationale or vocabulary of the national language as opposed to foreign words. In general linguistics, a vernacular is contrasted with a lingua franca, for instance, in Western Europe until the 17th century, most scholarly works had been written in Latin, which was serving as a lingua franca. Works written in Romance languages are said to be in the vernacular, the Divina Commedia, the Cantar de Mio Cid, and The Song of Roland are examples of early vernacular literature in Italian, Spanish, and French, respectively. In Europe, Latin was used instead of vernacular languages in varying forms until c. 1701, in its latter stage as New Latin, in Catholicism, vernacular bibles were later provided, but Latin was used at Tridentine Mass until the Second Vatican Council of 1965. Certain groups, notably Traditionalist Catholics, continue to practice Latin Mass, in India, the 12th century Bhakti movement led to the translation of Sanskrit texts to the vernacular. In science, a user of the vernacular was Galileo. 1600, though some of his works remained in Latin, a later example is Isaac Newton, whose 1687 Principia was in Latin, but whose 1704 Opticks was in English. Latin continues to be used in fields of science, notably binomial nomenclature in biology, while other fields such as mathematics use vernacular. In diplomacy, French displaced Latin in Europe in the 1710s, certain languages have both a classical form and various vernacular forms, with two widely used examples being Arabic and Chinese, see Varieties of Arabic and Chinese language. In the 1920s, due to the May Fourth Movement, Classical Chinese was replaced by written vernacular Chinese, the vernacular is also often contrasted with a liturgical language, a specialized use of a former lingua franca. Similarly, in Hindu culture, traditionally religious or scholarly works were written in Sanskrit or in Tamil in Tamil country. With the rise of the movement from the 12th century onwards, religious works were created in the other languages, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu. These circumstances are a contrast between a vernacular and language variant used by the same speakers, according to one school of linguistic thought, all such variants are examples of a linguistic phenomenon termed diglossia. In it, the language is bifurcated, i. e. the speaker learns two forms of the language and ordinarily uses one but under special circumstances the other. The one most frequently used is the low variant, equivalent to the vernacular, the concept was introduced to linguistics by Charles A. Ferguson, but Ferguson explicitly excluded variants as divergent as dialects or different languages or as similar as styles or registers

16.
Tuscan dialect
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Tuscan is an Italo-Dalmatian variety mainly spoken in Tuscany, Italy. It would later become the language of all the Italian states. Tuscan is a complex composed of many local variants, with minor differences among them. The main subdivision is between Northern Tuscan dialects and Southern Tuscan dialects, the Northern Tuscan dialects are, Fiorentino, the main dialect of Florence, Chianti and the Mugello region, also spoken in Prato and along the river Arno as far as the city of Fucecchio. Pistoiese, spoken in the city of Pistoia and nearest zones, pesciatino or Valdinievolese, spoken in the Valdinievole zone, in the cities of Pescia and Montecatini Terme. Lucchese, spoken in Lucca and nearby hills, versiliese, spoken in the historical area of Versilia. Viareggino, spoken in Viareggio and vicinity, pisano-Livornese, spoken in Pisa and in Livorno and the vicinity, and along the southern coast as far as the city of Piombino. The Southern Tuscan dialects are, Aretino-Chianaiolo, spoken in Arezzo, senese, spoken in the city and province of Siena. Grossetano, spoken in the city and province of Grosseto, Corsican and Gallurese, Corsican on the island of Corsica, and its variety spoken in Sardinia, are classified by scholars as a direct offshoot from medieval Tuscan. Excluding the inhabitants of Province of Massa and Carrara, who speak an Emilian variety of a Gallo-Italic language, the Tuscan dialect as a whole has certain defining features, with subdialects that are distinguished by minor details. The Tuscan gorgia affects the voiceless stop consonants /k/ /t/ and /p/, between vowels, the voiced post-alveolar affricate consonant is realized as voiced post-alveolar fricative, /dʒ/ →. This phenomenon is evident in daily speech, the phrase la gente, the people, in standard Italian is pronounced. Similarly, the voiceless affricate is pronounced as a voiceless post-alveolar fricative between two vowels, /tʃ/ →. The sequence /la ˈtʃena/ la cena, the dinner, in standard Italian is pronounced, as a result of this weakening rule, there are a few minimal pairs distinguished only by length of the voiceless fricative. A less common phenomenon is the transformation of voiceless s or voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ into the voiceless alveolar affricate when preceded by /r/, /l/. For example, il sole, pronounced in standard Italian as, however, since assimilation of the final consonant of the article to the following consonant tends to occur in exactly such cases the actual pronunciation will be usually. Affrication of /s/ can more commonly be heard word-internally, as in falso /ˈfalso/ → and this is a common phenomenon in Central Italy, but it is not exclusive to that area, for example it also happens in Switzerland. There are two Tuscan historical outcomes of Latin ŏ in stressed open syllables, passing first through a stage, the vowel then develops as a diphthong /wɔ/

17.
La Vita Nuova
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La Vita Nuova or Vita Nova is a text by Dante Alighieri published in 1295. It is an expression of the genre of courtly love in a prosimetrum style. Besides its content, it is notable for being written in Italian, rather than Latin, with Dantes other works, it helped to establish the Tuscan dialect as the standard for the Italian language. The prose creates the illusion of continuity between the poems, it is Dantes way of reconstructing himself and his art in terms of his evolving sense of the limitations of courtly love. Beatrice for Dante was the embodiment of this kind of love—transparent to the Absolute, referred to by Dante as his libello, or little book, The New Life is the first of two collections of verse written by Dante in his life. La Vita Nuova is a prosimetrum, a piece which is made up of both verse and prose, in the vein of Boethius Consolation of Philosophy. Dante used each prosimetrum as a means for combining poems written over periods of ten years - La Vita Nuova contains his works from before 1283 to roughly 1293. The first full translation into English was by Joseph Garrow and it was published in 1846, Dantes two-part commentaries explain each poem, placing them within the context of his life. The chapters containing poems consist of three parts, the narrative, the lyric that resulted from those circumstances, and brief structural outline of the lyric. Each separate section of commentary further refines Dantes concept of love as the initial step in a spiritual development that results in the capacity for divine love. Though the result is a landmark in the development of emotional autobiography, the names of the people in the poem, including Beatrice herself, are employed without use of surnames or any details that would assist readers to identify them among the many people of Florence. Only the name Beatrice is used, because that was both her name and her symbolic name as the conferrer of blessing. Ultimately the names and people work as metaphors, in chapter XXIV, I Felt My Heart Awaken, Dante accounts a meeting with Love, who asks the poet to do his best to honour her. Dante does not name himself in La Vita Nuova and he refers to Guido Cavalcanti as the first of my friends, to his own sister as a young and noble lady. Who was related to me by the closest consanguinity, to Beatrices brother similarly as one who was so linked in consanguinity to the lady that no-one was closer to her. La Vita Nuova is essential for understanding the context of his other works — principally La Commedia, the Henry Holiday painting Dante meets Beatrice at Ponte Santa Trinita is inspired by La Vita Nuova, as was Dante Gabriel Rossettis The Salutation of Beatrice. On p.99 of D. M. Thomass The White Hotel and this reference symbolizes Lisas desire for enlightenment at the time of her journey. A modified version of the line of the works Introduction was used on the television show Star Trek

18.
Petrarch
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Francesco Petrarca, commonly anglicized as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar and poet in Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarchs rediscovery of Ciceros letters is often credited with initiating the 14th-century Renaissance, Petrarch is often considered the founder of Humanism. In the 16th century, Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarchs works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio, Petrarch would be later endorsed as a model for Italian style by the Accademia della Crusca. Petrarchs sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and he is also known for being the first to develop the concept of the Dark Ages. This standing back from his time was possible because he straddled two worlds—the classical and his own modern day, Petrarch was born in the Tuscan city of Arezzo in 1304. He was the son of Ser Petracco and his wife Eletta Canigiani and his given name was Francesco Petracco. The name was Latinized to Petrarca, Petrarchs younger brother was born in Incisa in Val dArno in 1307. Dante was a friend of his father, Petrarch spent his early childhood in the village of Incisa, near Florence. He spent much of his life at Avignon and nearby Carpentras. He studied law at the University of Montpellier and Bologna with a lifelong friend, because his father was in the profession of law he insisted that Petrarch and his brother study law also. Petrarch however was interested in writing and Latin literature and considered these seven years wasted. Additionally he proclaimed that through legal manipulation his guardians robbed him of his small property inheritance in Florence and he protested, I couldnt face making a merchandise of my mind, as he viewed the legal system as the art of selling justice. Petrarch was a letter writer and counted Boccaccio among his notable friends to whom he wrote often. After the death of their parents, Petrarch and his brother Gherardo went back to Avignon in 1326 and this work gave him much time to devote to his writing. With his first large work, Africa, an epic in Latin about the great Roman general Scipio Africanus. On April 8,1341, he became the poet laureate since antiquity and was crowned by Roman Senatori Giordano Orsini. He traveled widely in Europe, served as an ambassador, and has called the first tourist because he traveled just for pleasure. During his travels, he collected crumbling Latin manuscripts and was a mover in the recovery of knowledge from writers of Rome

19.
Hell
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Hell, in many mythological, folklore and religious traditions, is a place of torment and punishment in an afterlife. Religions with a divine history often depict hells as eternal destinations while Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations. Typically these traditions locate hell in another dimension or under the Earths surface, other afterlife destinations include Heaven, Purgatory, Paradise, and Limbo. Hell is sometimes portrayed as populated with demons who torment those dwelling there, many are ruled by a death god such as Nergal, Hades, Hel, Enma or Satan. Subsequently, the word was used to transfer a pagan concept to Christian theology, Some have theorized that English word hell is derived from Old Norse hel. However, this is unlikely as hel appears in Old English before the Viking invasions. Furthermore, the word has cognates in all the other Germanic languages and has a Proto-Germanic origin, Hell appears in several mythologies and religions. It is commonly inhabited by demons and the souls of dead people, a fable about hell which recurs in folklore across several cultures is the allegory of the long spoons. Hell is often depicted in art and literature, perhaps most famously in Dantes Divine Comedy, punishment in Hell typically corresponds to sins committed during life. In many religious cultures, including Christianity and Islam, Hell is often depicted as fiery, painful and harsh, despite these common depictions of Hell as a place of fire, some other traditions portray Hell as cold. Buddhist - and particularly Tibetan Buddhist - descriptions of hell feature a number of hot. Among Christian descriptions Dantes Inferno portrays the innermost circle of Hell as a lake of blood. At death a person faced judgment by a tribunal of forty-two divine judges, if they had led a life in conformance with the precepts of the Goddess Maat, who represented truth and right living, the person was welcomed into the Two Fields. If found guilty the person was thrown to a devourer and would be condemned to the lake of fire, the person taken by the devourer is subject first to terrifying punishment and then annihilated. These depictions of punishment may have influenced medieval perceptions of the inferno in hell via early Christian, purification for those considered justified appears in the descriptions of Flame Island, where humans experience the triumph over evil and rebirth. For the damned complete destruction into a state of non-being awaits but there is no suggestion of eternal torture, the weighing of the heart in Egyptian mythology can lead to annihilation. The Tale of Khaemwese describes the torment of a man, who lacked charity. Divine pardon at judgement always remained a concern for the Ancient Egyptians

20.
Purgatory
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The notion of Purgatory is associated particularly with the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, Anglicans of the Anglo-Catholic tradition generally also hold to the belief. Judaism also believes in the possibility of purification and may even use the word purgatory to present its understanding of the meaning of Gehenna. However, the concept of soul purification may be denied in these other faith traditions. The same practice appears in traditions, such as the medieval Chinese Buddhist practice of making offerings on behalf of the dead. Roman Catholics consider the teaching on Purgatory, but not the imaginative accretions, of the early Church Fathers, Origen says that He who comes to be saved, comes to be saved through fire that burns away sins and worldliness like lead, leaving behind only pure gold. St. Ambrose of Milan speaks of a kind of baptism of fire which is located at the entrance to Heaven, and through which all must pass, at the end of the world. By this he meant that attachments to sin, habits of sin, and even venial sins could be removed in Purgatory, but not mortal sin, which, according to Catholic doctrine, causes eternal damnation. The Catholic Church gives the name Purgatory to the purification of all who die in Gods grace and friendship. Though Purgatory is often pictured as a rather than a process of purification. According to Catholic belief, immediately after death, a person undergoes judgment in which the eternal destiny is specified. Some are eternally united with God in Heaven, envisioned as a paradise of eternal joy, conversely, others reach a state called Hell, that is eternal separation from God often envisioned as an abode of never ending, fiery torment, a fire sometimes considered to be metaphorical. In addition to accepting the states of heaven and hell, Catholicism envisages a third state before being admitted to heaven, such souls, ultimately destined to be united with God in heaven, must first be cleansed through purgatory – a state of purification. Through purgatory, souls achieve the necessary to enter the joy of heaven. Mortal sin incurs both temporal punishment and eternal punishment, venial sin incurs only temporal punishment, the Catholic Church makes a distinction between these two types of sin. According to Catholicism, purification from our sinful tendencies can occur during life, the situation has been compared to that of someone who needs to be cleansed of any addiction. As from any addiction, rehabilitation from the disordered affection for created goods will be a gradual and it can be advanced during life by voluntary self-mortification and penance and by deeds of generosity that show love of God rather than of creatures. After death, a process can be recognized as a still necessary preparation for entering the divine presence. The writings of Saint Catherine of Genoa explain, As for paradise, whoever wishes to enter, does so

21.
Heaven
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According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to earth or incarnate, and earthly beings can ascend to Heaven in the afterlife, or in exceptional cases enter Heaven alive. Some believe in the possibility of a Heaven on Earth in a World to Come, another belief is in an axis mundi or world tree which connects the heavens, the terrestrial world, and the underworld. In Indian religions, Heaven is considered as Svarga loka, and this cycle can be broken after a soul achieves Moksha or Nirvana. Any place of existence, either of humans, souls or deities, the modern English word heaven is derived from the earlier heven, this in turn was developed from the previous Old English form heofon. By about 1000, heofon was being used in reference to the Christianized place where God dwells, all of these have been derived from a reconstructed Proto-Germanic form *Hemina-. In Ancient Egyptian religion, belief in an afterlife is much more stressed than in ancient Judaism, Heaven was a physical place far above the Earth in a dark area of space where there were no stars, basically beyond the Universe. Their heart would finally be weighed with the feather of truth, almost nothing is known of Bronze Age Canaanite views of Heaven, and the archeological findings at Ugarit have not provided information. The 1st century Greek author Philo of Byblos may preserve elements of Iron Age Phoenician religion in his Sanchuniathon, in the Middle Hittite myths, Heaven is the abode of the gods. In the Song of Kumarbi, Alalu was king in Heaven for nine years before giving birth to his son, Anu was himself overthrown by his son, Kumarbi. The Baháí Faith regards the description of Heaven as a specific place as symbolic. The Baháí writings describe Heaven as a condition where closeness to God is defined as Heaven. For Baháís, entry into the life has the potential to bring great joy. Baháulláh likened death to the process of birth and he explains, The world beyond is as different from this world as this world is different from that of the child while still in the womb of its mother. Accordingly, Baháís view life as a stage, where one can develop. The key to progress is to follow the path outlined by the current Manifestation of God. Baháulláh wrote, Know thou, of a truth, that if the soul of man hath walked in the ways of God, it will, assuredly return, in Buddhism there are several Heavens, all of which are still part of samsara. Those who accumulate good karma may be reborn in one of them, however, their stay in Heaven is not eternal—eventually they will use up their good karma and will undergo rebirth into another realm, as a human, animal or other being. Because Heaven is temporary and part of samsara, Buddhists focus more on escaping the cycle of rebirth, Nirvana is not a heaven but a mental state

22.
Art of Europe
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The art of Europe encompasses the history of visual art in Europe. European prehistoric art started as mobile rock, and cave painting art, written histories of European art often begin with the art of the Ancient Middle East, and the Ancient Aegean civilisations, dating from the 3rd millennium BC. Parallel with these significant cultures, art of one form or another existed all over Europe, wherever there were people, leaving signs such as carvings, decorated artifacts and huge standing stones. Before the 1800s, the Christian church was an influence upon European art. The history of the Church was very much reflected in the history of art, in the same period of time there was renewed interest in heroes and heroines, tales of mythological gods and goddesses, great wars, and bizarre creatures which were not connected to religion. Secularism has influenced European art since the Classical period, while most art of the last 200 years has produced without reference to religion. On the other hand, European art has often influenced by politics of one kind or another, of the state, of the patron. European art is arranged into a number of periods, which, historically. Broadly the periods are, Classical, Byzantine, Medieval, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical, European prehistoric art is an important part of the European cultural heritage. Prehistoric art history is divided into four main periods, Stone age, Neolithic, Bronze age. Most of the artifacts of this period are small sculptures. The oldest European cave art dates back 40,800, rock painting was also performed on cliff faces, but fewer of those have survived because of erosion. One well-known example is the paintings of Astuvansalmi in the Saimaa area of Finland. When Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola first encountered the Magdalenian paintings of the Altamira cave, Cantabria, Spain in 1879, recent reappraisals and numerous additional discoveries have since demonstrated their authenticity, while at the same time stimulating interest in the artistry of Upper Palaeolithic peoples. Cave paintings, undertaken with only the most rudimentary tools, can also furnish valuable insight into the culture, the figures are generally rather sketchily depicted in thin paint, with the relationships between the groups of humans and animals more carefully depicted than individual figures. Other less numerous groups of art, many engraved rather than painted. The Iberian examples are believed to date from a period perhaps covering the Upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic. There are human heads and some fully represented animals, but full-length human figures at any size are so rare that their absence may represent a religious taboo, the Minoan culture is regarded as the oldest civilization in Europe

23.
John Milton
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John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, man of letters, and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of flux and political upheaval. Miltons poetry and prose reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, Samuel Johnson praised Paradise Lost as a poem which. The phases of Miltons life parallel the major historical and political divisions in Stuart Britain, the Restoration of 1660 deprived Milton, now completely blind, of his public platform, but this period saw him complete most of his major works of poetry. Miltons views developed from his extensive reading, as well as travel and experience. By the time of his death in 1674, Milton was impoverished and on the margins of English intellectual life, yet famous throughout Europe, John Milton was born in Bread Street, London on 9 December 1608, the son of composer John Milton and his wife Sarah Jeffrey. The senior John Milton moved to London around 1583 after being disinherited by his devout Catholic father Richard Milton for embracing Protestantism, in London, the senior John Milton married Sarah Jeffrey and found lasting financial success as a scrivener. He lived in and worked from a house on Bread Street, the elder Milton was noted for his skill as a musical composer, and this talent left his son with a lifelong appreciation for music and friendships with musicians such as Henry Lawes. Miltons fathers prosperity provided his eldest son with a tutor, Thomas Young. Research suggests that Youngs influence served as the introduction to religious radicalism. After Youngs tutorship, Milton attended St Pauls School in London, there he began the study of Latin and Greek, and the classical languages left an imprint on his poetry in English. Miltons first datable compositions are two psalms done at age 15 at Long Bennington, one contemporary source is the Brief Lives of John Aubrey, an uneven compilation including first-hand reports. In the work, Aubrey quotes Christopher, Miltons younger brother, When he was young, he studied hard and sat up very late. In 1625, Milton began attending Christs College, Cambridge and he graduated with a B. A. in 1629, and ranked fourth of 24 honours graduates that year in the University of Cambridge. Preparing to become an Anglican priest, Milton stayed on to obtain his Master of Arts degree on 3 July 1632, Milton was probably rusticated for quarrelling in his first year with his tutor, Bishop William Chappell. He was certainly at home in the Lent Term 1626, there he wrote his Elegia Prima, a first Latin elegy, to Charles Diodati, based on remarks of John Aubrey, Chappell whipt Milton. This story is now disputed, though certainly Milton disliked Chappell, historian Christopher Hill cautiously notes that Milton was apparently rusticated, and that the differences between Chappell and Milton may have been either religious or personal. It is also possible that, like Isaac Newton four decades later, Milton was sent home because of the plague, in 1626, Miltons tutor was Nathaniel Tovey

24.
Geoffrey Chaucer
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Geoffrey Chaucer, known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages. He was the first poet to be buried in Poets Corner of Westminster Abbey, among his many works are The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde. He is best known today for The Canterbury Tales, Chaucers work was crucial in legitimizing the literary use of the Middle English vernacular at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were French and Latin. Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London sometime around 1343, though the precise date and his father and grandfather were both London vintners, several previous generations had been merchants in Ipswich. In 1324 John Chaucer, Geoffreys father, was kidnapped by an aunt in the hope of marrying the boy to her daughter in an attempt to keep property in Ipswich. The aunt was imprisoned and the fine levied suggests that the family was financially secure. In the City Hustings Roll 110,5, Ric II, dated June 1380, Geoffrey Chaucer refers to himself as me Galfridum Chaucer, filium Johannis Chaucer, Vinetarii, Londonie. He also worked as a courtier, a diplomat, and a civil servant, as well as working for the king from 1389 to 1391 as Clerk of the Kings Works. In 1359, in the stages of the Hundred Years War, Edward III invaded France and Chaucer travelled with Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence, Elizabeths husband. In 1360, he was captured during the siege of Rheims, Edward paid £16 for his ransom, a considerable sum, and Chaucer was released. After this, Chaucers life is uncertain, but he seems to have travelled in France, Spain, around 1366, Chaucer married Philippa Roet. She was a lady-in-waiting to Edward IIIs queen, Philippa of Hainault, and a sister of Katherine Swynford and it is uncertain how many children Chaucer and Philippa had, but three or four are most commonly cited. His son, Thomas Chaucer, had a career, as chief butler to four kings, envoy to France. Thomass daughter, Alice, married the Duke of Suffolk, thomass great-grandson, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, was the heir to the throne designated by Richard III before he was deposed. Geoffreys other children probably included Elizabeth Chaucy, a nun at Barking Abbey, Agnes, an attendant at Henry IVs coronation, Chaucers Treatise on the Astrolabe was written for Lewis. According to tradition, Chaucer studied law in the Inner Temple at this time and he became a member of the royal court of Edward III as a valet de chambre, yeoman, or esquire on 20 June 1367, a position which could entail a wide variety of tasks. His wife also received a pension for court employment and he travelled abroad many times, at least some of them in his role as a valet. In 1368, he may have attended the wedding of Lionel of Antwerp to Violante Visconti, daughter of Galeazzo II Visconti, two other literary stars of the era were in attendance, Jean Froissart and Petrarch

25.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victorias reign and remains one of the most popular British poets. Tennyson excelled at penning short lyrics, such as Break, Break, Break, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Tears, Idle Tears, Tennyson also wrote some notable blank verse including Idylls of the King, Ulysses, and Tithonus. During his career, Tennyson attempted drama, but his plays enjoyed little success and he is the ninth most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Tennyson was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England and he was born into a middle-class line of Tennysons, but also had a noble and royal ancestry. His father, George Clayton Tennyson, was rector of Somersby, also rector of Benniworth and Bag Enderby, and vicar of Grimsby. Rev. George Clayton Tennyson raised a family and was a man of superior abilities and varied attainments, who tried his hand with fair success in architecture, painting, music. He was comfortably well off for a clergyman and his shrewd money management enabled the family to spend summers at Mablethorpe. Alfred Tennysons mother, Elizabeth Fytche, was the daughter of Stephen Fytche, vicar of St. James Church, Louth and rector of Withcall, Tennysons father carefully attended to the education and training of his children. Tennyson and two of his brothers were writing poetry in their teens and a collection of poems by all three was published locally when Alfred was only 17. One of those brothers, Charles Tennyson Turner, later married Louisa Sellwood, the sister of Alfreds future wife. Another of Tennysons brothers, Edward Tennyson, was institutionalised at a private asylum, Tennyson was a student of Louth Grammar School for four years and then attended Scaitcliffe School, Englefield Green and King Edward VI Grammar School, Louth. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827, where he joined a society called the Cambridge Apostles. A portrait of Tennyson by George Frederic Watts is in Trinitys collection, at Cambridge, Tennyson met Arthur Henry Hallam and William Henry Brookfield, who became his closest friends. His first publication was a collection of his rhymes and those of his elder brother Charles entitled Poems by Two Brothers. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellors Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, reportedly, it was thought to be no slight honour for a young man of twenty to win the chancellors gold medal. He published his first solo collection of poems, Poems Chiefly Lyrical in 1830, claribel and Mariana, which later took their place among Tennysons most celebrated poems, were included in this volume. Although decried by critics as overly sentimental, his verse soon proved popular and brought Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day. In the spring of 1831, Tennysons father died, requiring him to leave Cambridge before taking his degree and he returned to the rectory, where he was permitted to live for another six years and shared responsibility for his widowed mother and the family

26.
Inferno (Dante)
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Inferno is the first part of Dante Alighieris 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy. It is followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso, the Inferno tells the journey of Dante through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. As an allegory, the Divine Comedy represents the journey of the soul toward God, Canto I The poem begins on the night of Maundy Thursday on March 241300 A. D. shortly before dawn of Good Friday. The narrator, Dante himself, is years old. The poet finds himself lost in a wood, astray from the straight way of salvation. He sets out to climb directly up a mountain. The three beasts, taken from the Jeremiah 5,6, are thought to symbolize the three kinds of sin that bring the unrepentant soul into one of the three divisions of Hell. According to John Ciardi, these are incontinence, violence and bestiality, and fraud and malice, Dorothy L. Sayers assigns the leopard to incontinence and it is now dawn of Good Friday, April 8, with the sun rising in Aries. The beasts drive him back despairing into the darkness of error, however, Dante is rescued by a figure who announces that he was born sub Iulio and lived under Augustus, it is the shade of the Roman poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid, a Latin epic. Canto II On the evening of Good Friday, Dante is following Virgil but hesitates, Virgil explains how he has sent by Beatrice. Beatrice has been sent with prayers from the Virgin Mary and of Saint Lucia, rachel, symbolic of the contemplative life, also appears in the heavenly scene recounted by Virgil. The two of them begin their journey to the underworld. Dante and his guide hear the screams of the Uncommitted. These are the souls of people who in life took no sides, the opportunists who were for neither good nor evil, among these Dante recognizes a figure implied to be Pope Celestine V, whose cowardice served as the door through which so much evil entered the Church. Mixed with them are outcasts who took no side in the Rebellion of Angels and these souls are forever unclassified, they are neither in Hell nor out of it, but reside on the shores of the Acheron. Naked and futile, they race around through the mist in eternal pursuit of an elusive, wavering banner while relentlessly chased by swarms of wasps and hornets, who continually sting them. Loathsome maggots and worms at the sinners feet drink the putrid mixture of blood, pus and this symbolizes the sting of their guilty conscience and the repugnance of sin. This may also be seen as a reflection of the spiritual stagnation they lived in, after passing through the vestibule, Dante and Virgil reach the ferry that will take them across the river Acheron and to Hell proper

27.
Gemini (astrology)
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Gemini is the third astrological sign in the zodiac, originating from the constellation of Gemini. Under the tropical zodiac, the sun transits this sign between May 21 and June 21, Gemini is represented by The Twins Castor and Pollux. The symbol of the twins is based on the Dioscuri, two mortals that were granted shared godhood after death, Geminis are considered to hold mysteriously unique artistic and creative abilities unlike other signs. Often considered to be very intelligent individuals, they have an appreciation for the arts, philosophy, history. They do not like boring people or routine procedures and therefore struggle to deal with authoritative figures and they are enlightened to talk about any subject which they find interesting and where they can stimulate their naturally intellectual personalities. Geminis are noted to be drastic and hasty yet very responsible and they are considered to be the most misunderstood of all signs due to their dual personality expressed by the twins of their sign. Because of this, dont be surprised to often find Geminis in different moods and this makes them quite philosophical people. Geminis are sensitive as well but use their intelligence to counter anything that upsets them. Geminis usually get very well with Leos, Aries and Sagittariuses. They do not see eye to eye with Pisces, Cancers, Gemini are best suited for people of Aquarius and Libra signs but also go well with Capricorns, and Taurus signs. Longitude of Sun, apparent geocentric ecliptic of date, interpolated to find time of crossing 0°, 30°, atsma, Aaron J. DIOSCURI, Greek Gods of Horsemanship, Protectors of Sailors | Mythology, Dioskouroi, w/ pictures. The dictionary definition of Gemini at Wiktionary Media related to Gemini at Wikimedia Commons Warburg Institute Iconographic Database

28.
Julian calendar
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The Julian calendar, proposed by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, was a reform of the Roman calendar. It took effect on 1 January 45 BC, by edict, the Julian calendar gains against the mean tropical year at the rate of one day in 128 years. For the Gregorian the figure is one day in 3,030 years, the difference in the average length of the year between Julian and Gregorian is 0. 002%. The Julian calendar has a year of 365 days divided into 12 months. A leap day is added to February every four years, the Julian year is, therefore, on average 365.25 days long. It was intended to approximate the tropical year, as a result, the calendar year gains about three days every four centuries compared to observed equinox times and the seasons. This discrepancy was corrected by the Gregorian reform of 1582, consequently, the Julian calendar is currently 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar. Egypt converted on 20 December 1874/1 January 1875, turkey switched on 16 February/1 March 1917. Russia changed on 1/14 February 1918, Greece made the change for civil purposes on 16 February/1 March 1923 - the national day, which was a religious holiday, was to remain on the old calendar. Most Christian denominations in the west and areas evangelised by western churches have replaced the Julian calendar with the Gregorian as the basis for their liturgical calendars. However, most branches of the Eastern Orthodox Church still use the Julian calendar for calculating the date of Easter, some Orthodox churches have adopted the Revised Julian calendar for the observance of fixed feasts, while other Orthodox churches retain the Julian calendar for all purposes. The Julian calendar is used by the Berbers of the Maghreb in the form of the Berber calendar. In the form of the Alexandrian calendar, it is the basis for the Ethiopian calendar, during the changeover between calendars and for some time afterwards, dual dating was used in documents and gave the date according to both systems. In contemporary as well as texts that describe events during the period of change. The ordinary year in the previous Roman calendar consisted of 12 months, in addition, a 27- or 28-day intercalary month, the Mensis Intercalaris, was sometimes inserted between February and March. The net effect was to add 22 or 23 days to the year, some say the mensis intercalaris always had 27 days and began on either the first or the second day after the Terminalia. According to the later writers Censorinus and Macrobius, the ideal intercalary cycle consisted of ordinary years of 355 days alternating with intercalary years, alternately 377 and 378 days long. In this system, the average Roman year would have had 366 1⁄4 days over four years, Macrobius describes a further refinement whereby, in one 8-year period within a 24-year cycle, there were only three intercalary years, each of 377 days

29.
Cacciaguida
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Cacciaguida degli Elisei was an Italian crusader, the great-great-grandfather of Dante Alighieri. Little is known about his life and he was born in Florence, and two documents from 1189 and 1201 mention his existence. The 1189 document lists his sons as Preitenetto and Alighiero, the latter being Dantes great-grandfather, all other details of his biography are those from his most famous descendants works. Dante recounts that Cacciaguida joined the Second Crusade and was knighted by Emperor Conrad III before dying in the Holy Land. Dante meets Cacciaguida in Paradiso, precisely in the canti XV-XVII, Cacciaguida is the only ancestor of Dante he encounters, and the elder serves as a father figure to poet, and a parallel to Virgils Aeneas meeting with his own father Anchises. Apart from their value, the canti are important for the information they provide about Florence in the 12th century. In the canto XVII, Cacciaguida forecasts Dantes future, namely his exile from Florence and the solitude of his late years

30.
Guelphs and Ghibellines
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The Guelphs and Ghibellines were factions supporting the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, respectively, in the Italian city-states of central and northern Italy. During the 12th and 13th centuries, rivalry between two parties formed a particularly important aspect of the internal politics of medieval Italy. The struggle for power between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire had arisen with the Investiture Controversy, which began in 1075, the division between the Guelphs and Ghibellines in Italy, however, persisted until the 15th century. Guelph is an Italian form of the name of the House of Welf, the names were likely introduced to Italy during the reign of Frederick Barbarossa. When Frederick conducted military campaigns in Italy to expand imperial power there, the Lombard League and its allies were defending the liberties of the urban communes against the Emperors encroachments and became known as Guelphs. The Ghibellines were thus the party, while the Guelphs supported the Pope. Broadly speaking, Guelphs tended to come from wealthy mercantile families, the Lombard League defeated Frederick at the Battle of Legnano in 1176. Frederick recognized the autonomy of the cities of the Lombard league under his nominal suzerainty. The division developed its own dynamic in the politics of medieval Italy, smaller cities tended to be Ghibelline if the larger city nearby was Guelph, as Guelph Republic of Florence and Ghibelline Republic of Siena faced off at the Battle of Montaperti,1260. Pisa maintained a staunch Ghibelline stance against her fiercest rivals, the Guelph Republic of Genoa, adherence to one of the parties could therefore be motivated by local or regional political reasons. Within cities, party allegiances differed from guild to guild, rione to rione, moreover, sometimes traditionally Ghibelline cities allied with the Papacy, while Guelph cities were even punished with interdict. Contemporaries did not use the terms Guelph and Ghibellines much until about 1250, at the beginning of the 13th century, Philip of Swabia, a Hohenstaufen, and his son-in-law Otto of Brunswick, a Welf, were rivals for the imperial throne. Philip was supported by the Ghibellines as a relative of Frederick I, Frederick II also introduced this division to the Crusader states in the Levant during the Sixth Crusade. After the death of Frederick II in 1250 the Ghibellines were supported by Conrad IV of Germany and later Manfred, King of Sicily, the Sienese Ghibellines inflicted a noteworthy defeat on Florentine Guelphs at the Battle of Montaperti. In that period the stronghold of Italian Ghibellines was the city of Forlì and that city remained with the Ghibelline factions, partly as a means of preserving its independence, rather than out of loyalty to the temporal power, as Forlì was nominally in the Papal States. Over the centuries, the papacy tried several times to control of Forlì. Essentially the two sides were now fighting either against German influence, or against the power of the Pope. In Florence and elsewhere the Guelphs usually included merchants and burghers and they also adopted peculiar customs such as wearing a feather on a particular side of their hats, or cutting fruit a particular way, according to their affiliation

31.
Battle of Montaperti
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The Battle of Montaperti was fought on 4 September 1260 between Florence and Siena in Tuscany as part of the conflict between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. It was the bloodiest battle fought in Medieval Italy, with more than 10,000 fatalities, an act of treachery during the battle is recorded by Dante Alighieri in the Inferno section of the Divine Comedy. In the mid-13th century, Guelphs held sway in Florence whilst Ghibellines controlled Siena, the feud came to a head two years later when the Florentines, aided by their Tuscan allies, moved an army of some 35,000 men toward Siena. The Sienese called for help from King Manfred of Sicily, who provided a contingent of German mercenary heavy cavalry, as well as the Holy Roman states of Pisa, the Sienese forces were led by Farinata degli Uberti, an exiled Florentine Ghibelline. Even with these reinforcements, though, they could raise an army of only 20,000, the Ghibelline army consisted of four divisions, with a well worked out but risky plan involving an ambushing force in the rear of the Florentine army. The second division, led by the German commander, Count Giordano dAgliano made up the vanguard of the Sienese main body, in addition, the Ghibellines conducted harassing night raids on the Guelf camp. The Florentines had no choice but to offer battle, the battle took place at the foot of the Monselvoli-Costaberci Ridge about six kilometers east of Siena. The Ghibelline-Sienese army was arrayed north to south with the vanguard on the north, or left wing, to the east, facing them, with the tactical advantages of being uphill and with a rising sun behind them were the Guelf-Florentines, in a defensive posture. The battle raged with the Florentines gradually gaining the upper hand due to the weight of numbers until about 15,00. At about this time, a group of Tuscan Ghibelline exiles. Bocca and the other Ghibelline sympathizers in the Guelph ranks then charged the Florentine Carroccio, by then it was late in the day and the Guelphs had the sun in their eyes. Around 18,00, the cry of “San Giorgio” went up from the Ghibelline ranks. This led to the beginning of a rout of the Florentine-Guelph forces, the greater part of the Florentine cavalry was destroyed, their camp sacked, and their carroccio was captured. It is estimated that 10,000 men died on the Guelph side,4,000 went missing, and 15,000 were captured, the rest running for their lives. Dante studied under Florences Chancellor Brunetto Latini, who was away from the battle scene. As a result, Dante reserved a place in the circle of Hell for the traitor Bocca degli Abati in his Divine Comedy. The Ghibelline commander Farinata degli Uberti is also consigned to Dantes hell, not for his conduct in the battle, Dante Alighieri Guelphs and Ghibellines Manfred of Sicily Siena Florence Montaperti Excerpt from the Chronicle of Giovanni Villani Excerpt from The Divine Comedy, the ninth circle of Hell

32.
Pope
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The pope is the Bishop of Rome and, therefore, the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church. The current pope is Francis, who was elected on 13 March 2013, the office of the pope is the papacy. The pope is considered one of the worlds most powerful people because of his diplomatic and he is also head of state of Vatican City, a sovereign city-state entirely enclaved within the Italian capital city of Rome. The papacy is one of the most enduring institutions in the world and has had a prominent part in world history, the popes in ancient times helped in the spread of Christianity and the resolution of various doctrinal disputes. In the Middle Ages, they played a role of importance in Western Europe. Currently, in addition to the expansion of the Christian faith and doctrine, the popes are involved in ecumenism and interfaith dialogue, charitable work, Popes, who originally had no temporal powers, in some periods of history accrued wide powers similar to those of temporal rulers. In recent centuries, popes were gradually forced to give up temporal power, the word pope derives from Greek πάππας meaning father. The earliest record of the use of title was in regard to the by then deceased Patriarch of Alexandria. Some historians have argued that the notion that Peter was the first bishop of Rome, the writings of the Church Father Irenaeus who wrote around AD180 reflect a belief that Peter founded and organised the Church at Rome. Moreover, Irenaeus was not the first to write of Peters presence in the early Roman Church, Clement of Rome wrote in a letter to the Corinthians, c. 96, about the persecution of Christians in Rome as the struggles in our time and presented to the Corinthians its heroes, first, the greatest and most just columns, the good apostles Peter and Paul. St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote shortly after Clement and in his letter from the city of Smyrna to the Romans he said he would not command them as Peter and Paul did. Given this and other evidence, many agree that Peter was martyred in Rome under Nero. Protestants contend that the New Testament offers no proof that Jesus established the papacy nor even that he established Peter as the first bishop of Rome, others, using Peters own words, argue that Christ intended himself as the foundation of the church and not Peter. First-century Christian communities would have had a group of presbyter-bishops functioning as leaders of their local churches, gradually, episcopacies were established in metropolitan areas. Antioch may have developed such a structure before Rome, some writers claim that the emergence of a single bishop in Rome probably did not occur until the middle of the 2nd century. In their view, Linus, Cletus and Clement were possibly prominent presbyter-bishops, documents of the 1st century and early 2nd century indicate that the Holy See had some kind of pre-eminence and prominence in the Church as a whole, though the detail of what this meant is unclear. It seems that at first the terms episcopos and presbyter were used interchangeably, the consensus among scholars has been that, at the turn of the 1st and 2nd centuries, local congregations were led by bishops and presbyters whose offices were overlapping or indistinguishable

33.
Holy Roman Emperor
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The Holy Roman Emperor was the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. From an autocracy in Carolingian times the title evolved into an elected monarchy chosen by the Prince-electors, until the Reformation the Emperor elect was required to be crowned by the Pope before assuming the imperial title. The title was held in conjunction with the rule of the Kingdom of Germany, in theory, the Holy Roman Emperor was primus inter pares among the other Catholic monarchs, in practice, a Holy Roman Emperor was only as strong as his army and alliances made him. Various royal houses of Europe, at different times, effectively became hereditary holders of the title, after the Reformation many of the subject states and most of those in Germany were Protestant while the Emperor continued to be Catholic. The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved by the last Emperor as a result of the collapse of the polity during the Napoleonic wars, from the time of Constantine I the Roman emperors had, with very few exceptions, taken on a role as promoters and defenders of Christianity. In the west, the title of Emperor was revived in 800, as the power of the papacy grew during the Middle Ages, popes and emperors came into conflict over church administration. The best-known and most bitter conflict was known as the Investiture Controversy. After Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III, no pope appointed an emperor again until the coronation of Otto the Great in 962. Under Otto and his successors, much of the former Carolingian kingdom of Eastern Francia fell within the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire, the various German princes elected one of their peers as King of the Germans, after which he would be crowned as emperor by the Pope. After Charles Vs coronation, all succeeding emperors were called elected Emperor due to the lack of papal coronation, the term sacrum in connection with the medieval Roman Empire was first used in 1157 under Frederick I Barbarossa. Charles V was the last Holy Roman Emperor to be crowned by the Pope, the final Holy Roman Emperor-elect, Francis II, abdicated in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars that saw the Empires final dissolution. The standard designation of the Holy Roman Emperor was August Emperor of the Romans, the word Holy had never been used as part of that title in official documents. In German-language historiography, the term Römisch-deutscher Kaiser is used to distinguish the title from that of Roman Emperor on one hand, the English term Holy Roman Emperor is a modern shorthand for emperor of the Holy Roman Empire not corresponding to the historical style or title. Successions to the kingship were controlled by a variety of complicated factors, elections meant the kingship of Germany was only partially hereditary, unlike the kingship of France, although sovereignty frequently remained in a dynasty until there were no more male successors. The Electoral council was set at seven princes by the Golden Bull of 1356, another elector was added in 1690, and the whole college was reshuffled in 1803, a mere three years before the dissolution of the Empire. After 1438, the Kings remained in the house of Habsburg and Habsburg-Lorraine, with the exception of Charles VII. Maximilian I and his successors no longer travelled to Rome to be crowned as Emperor by the Pope, Maximilian therefore named himself Elected Roman Emperor in 1508 with papal approval. This title was in use by all his uncrowned successors, of his successors only Charles V, the immediate one, received a papal coronation

34.
Civil law notary
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Civil-law notaries are limited to areas of private law, that is, domestic law which regulates the relationships between individuals and in which the State is not directly concerned. Ordinarily, they have no authority to appear in court on their clients behalf, their role is limited to drafting, authenticating, and registering certain types of transactional or legal instruments. In some countries, such as the Netherlands, France or Italy, among others, they also retain and keep a copy of their instruments—in the form of memoranda—in notarial protocols. Notaries generally hold undergraduate degrees in law and graduate degrees in notarial law. Notarial law involves expertise in a spectrum of private law including family law, estate and testamentary law, conveyancing and property law, the law of agency. Any such practice is usually regulated, and most countries parcel out areas into notarial districts with a set number of notary positions. This has the effect of making notarial appointments very limited, as a lawyer, a civil-law notary draws up and executes legal instruments called notarial instruments. Traditionally, notarial instruments trigger a præsumptio veritatis et solemnitatis entailing two consequences—regularity and probativity, first, being an official act, a presumption of regularity attaches to the instrument, meaning all prescribed formalities have been carried out, including the reading over of the instrument. Second, an instrument is self-authenticating and probative, i. e. it constitutes full proof of the agreement it contains, as against the parties, their heirs. It also means the notarys firsthand narrations of fact are conclusively presumed true and correct, whereas secondhand narrations are merely assertio notarii which are rebuttably presumed valid. In either case, the appearer always walks away with an instrument that is self-executing, finally, notarial instruments have a fixed effective or signature date that cannot be ante- or postdated, or left blank and filled in after signing. Notarial instruments cannot be altered or overridden by prior or subsequent instruments under hand, in other words, for example, a notarial will could not be amended or superseded by a non-notarial codicil or will. An unexecuted minute is deemed proof of an instrument and considered the original. The minute is therefore the authenticum, or original instrument of writing, as distinguished from the self-executing copy, or instrumentum. This presumption stems from the fact that a notary is expected to verify the facts, assertions, or events mentioned in his act, thereby assuming liability for, a successfully improbated instrument is null and set aside. Nowadays, an instrument is prepared first as an unexecuted original called a minute. The minute is archived in the draftsman notarys protocol, the instruments particulars—appearer, fees, subject matter, witnesses, date, and so forth—are noted or minuted in a register or logbook. It is also the only copy that has fresh signatures and seals on it, the engrossed copy is issued directly to the appearer

35.
Beatrice Portinari
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Scholars have long debated whether the historical Beatrice is intended to be identified with either or both of the Beatrices in Dantes writings. She was apparently the daughter of the banker Folco Portinari, and was married to another banker, Simone dei Bardi. Dante claims to have met a Beatrice only twice, on occasions separated by nine years, the tradition that identifies Bice di Folco Portinari as the Beatrice loved by Dante is now widely, though not unanimously, accepted by scholars. Boccaccio, in his commentary on the Divine Comedy, was the first one to refer to the young woman. Clear documents on her life have always been scarce, helping to make even her existence doubtful, the only hard evidence is the will of Folco Portinari from 1287 which says. item d. Bici filie sue et uxoris d, lib.50 ad floren—essentially a bequest to his daughter who was married to Simone dei Bardi. Folco Portinari was a banker, born in Portico di Romagna. He moved to Florence and lived in a house near Dante where he had six daughters, Folco also gave generously to found the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. According to Dante, he first met Beatrice when his father took him to the Portinari house for a May Day party, at the time, Beatrice was eight years old, a year younger than Dante. Dante was instantly taken with her and remained so throughout his life though she married another man, banker Simone dei Bardi. Beatrice died three years after the marriage in June 1290 at the age of 24, Dante continued to hold an abiding love and respect for the woman after her death, even after he married Gemma Donati in 1285 and had children. After Beatrices death, Dante withdrew into intense study and began composing poems dedicated to her memory, the collection of these poems, along with others he had previously written in his journal in awe of Beatrice, became La Vita Nuova. According to the autobiographic La Vita Nuova, Beatrice and Dante met only twice during their lives, even less credible is the numerology behind these encounters, marking out Dantes life in periods of nine years. This amount of falls in line with Dantes repeated use of the number three or multiples of, derived from the Holy Trinity. As he did so, he made efforts to ensure his thoughts of Beatrice remained private, even writing poetry for another lady. Dantes courtly love for Beatrice continued for nine years, before the pair met again. This meeting occurred in a street of Florence, which she walked along dressed in white and she turned and greeted him, her salutation filling him with such joy that he retreated to his room to think about her. In doing so, he fell asleep, and had a dream which would become the subject of the first sonnet in La Vita Nuova, in this dream, a mighty figure appeared before him, and spoke to him

36.
Battle of Campaldino
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The Battle of Campaldino was a battle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines on 11 June 1289. One of the combatants on the Guelph side was Dante Alighieri and this led to an Arentine force being quickly assembled and marching out to counter the threat. The Florentines deployed an advance guard of cavalry, behind which, on each wing they placed their infantry, slightly forward so the line was crescent shaped. Behind this force, they drew up their baggage and, behind that, the Arentines drew up in four lines, the first, second and fourth of cavalry, the third of infantry. The Arentines attacked with their first three lines, scattering the Florentine advanced guard and pushing back the body towards the wagons. However, they now came under crossfire from the flanking infantry, the Florentine reserve now made a flanking attack, trapping the Aretines. According to Villani, Corso Donati, podestà of Pistoia. Though under orders to stand ready in reserve, shouted “If we lose, I will die in the battle with my fellow citizens, instead of coming to the rescue, the Aretine reserve fled

37.
Tuscany
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Tuscany is a region in central Italy with an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.8 million inhabitants. Tuscany is known for its landscapes, traditions, history, artistic legacy, Tuscany produces wines, including Chianti, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Morellino di Scansano and Brunello di Montalcino. Having a strong linguistic and cultural identity, it is considered a nation within a nation. Tuscany is traditionally a popular destination in Italy, and the main tourist destinations by number of tourist arrivals are Florence, Pisa, Montecatini Terme, Castiglione della Pescaia and Grosseto. The village of Castiglione della Pescaia is also the most visited destination in the region. Additionally, Siena, Lucca, the Chianti region, Versilia and Val dOrcia are also internationally renowned, Tuscany has over 120 protected nature reserves, making Tuscany and its capital Florence popular tourist destinations that attract millions of tourists every year. In 2012, the city of Florence was the worlds 89th most visited city, roughly triangular in shape, Tuscany borders the regions of Liguria to the northwest, Emilia-Romagna to the north and east, Umbria to the east and Lazio to the southeast. The comune of Badia Tedalda, in the Tuscan Province of Arezzo, has an exclave named Ca Raffaello within Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany has a western coastline on the Tyrrhenian Sea, containing the Tuscan Archipelago, of which the largest island is Elba. Tuscany has an area of approximately 22,993 square kilometres, surrounded and crossed by major mountain chains, and with few plains, the region has a relief that is dominated by hilly country used for agriculture. Hills make up nearly two-thirds of the total area, covering 15,292 square kilometres, and mountains. Plains occupy 8. 4% of the total area—1,930 square kilometres —mostly around the valley of the River Arno, many of Tuscanys largest cities lie on the banks of the Arno, including the capital Florence, Empoli and Pisa. The pre-Etruscan history of the area in the late Bronze and Iron Ages parallels that of the early Greeks, following this, the Villanovan culture saw Tuscany, and the rest of Etruria, taken over by chiefdoms. City-states developed in the late Villanovan before Orientalization occurred and the Etruscan civilization rose, the Etruscans created the first major civilization in this region, large enough to establish a transport infrastructure, to implement agriculture and mining and to produce vibrant art. The Etruscans lived in Etruria well into prehistory, throughout their existence, they lost territory to Magna Graecia, Carthage and Celts. Despite being seen as distinct in its manners and customs by contemporary Greeks, the cultures of Greece, one reason for its eventual demise was this increasing absorption by surrounding cultures, including the adoption of the Etruscan upper class by the Romans. Soon after absorbing Etruria, Rome established the cities of Lucca, Pisa, Siena, and Florence, endowed the area with new technologies and development, and ensured peace. These developments included extensions of existing roads, introduction of aqueducts and sewers, however, many of these structures have been destroyed by erosion due to weather. The Roman civilization in the West collapsed in the 5th century AD, in the years following 572, the Longobards arrived and designated Lucca the capital of their Duchy of Tuscia

38.
Sicilian School
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The Sicilian School was a small community of Sicilian, and to a lesser extent, mainland Italian poets gathered around Frederick II, most of them belonging to his court, the Magna Curia. Headed by Giacomo da Lentini, they produced more than three-hundred poems of love between 1230 and 1266, the experiment being continued after Fredericks death by his son, Manfred. These poets drew inspiration from the poetry of Occitania written in langue doc. In the lower Middle Ages more and more women were reading books than ever before and poetry tried to adapt to their point of view and this features French poetry, then very influential in Italy. It is lyric poetry to be in the forefront of literature and that is why the new standard was a Koiné language, a melting pot of many different vernaculars. The reason for moving from city to city was mainly political, frederic was in fact dismantling the feudal system of government inherited from the Normans, his magna curia and minor dignitaries were usually chosen from lay orders. He also abolished internal barriers, free trade brought prosperity to the South, but, keeping this modern state afloat, meant that his barons had no power to collect taxes, their greatest source of revenues. Hence the necessity for Frederick to bring law and order by moving his court to, there is a visible move towards neoplatonic models, which will be embraced by Dolce Stil Novo in the later 13th century Bologna and Florence, and more markedly by Petrarch. Unlike the Northern Italian troubadours, no line is written in Occitan. Rather, the Occitan repertoire of chivalry terms is adapted to the Siculo-Italian phonetics and morphology, so that new Italian words are actually coined, some adapted, a most famous specimen is Io maggio posto in core by Giacomo da Lentini, who apparently inspired the movement. Giacomo da Lentini is also credited by scholars for inventing the sonnet. He uses it in a number of poems, in this respect, the poetry of the north, though stuck to the langues doïl, provided fresher blood for satire. The re-shaping of the Occitan model also involved the suppression of music and that meant no interchangeable lines as in troubadour poetry and fewer repetitions, for a French jongleur who sang his poems these were necessary, but they sounded redundant to the Sicilian authors. Their poetry was music to the eye, not to the ear, the sonnet is even more exacting on this point, the separation between the octave and the sestet is purely a logical one, the rimes drawing a visual line between the first and last part. However, the fact that Italian poetry was being made for the public may have facilitated its circulation. This Contrasto is written in a Sicilian language close to that spoken in the city of Messina, the subject is a humorous fight between two young lovers, a kind of poetry quite common in the Middle Ages. It is about a suitor who sneaks into the garden of a young lady from a rich Sicilian family and secretly declares his love to her. However, the language uses much of the language of lyric poetry

39.
Sicily
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Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is an autonomous Region of Italy, along with surrounding minor islands, Sicily is located in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula, from which it is separated by the narrow Strait of Messina. Its most prominent landmark is Mount Etna, the tallest active volcano in Europe, the island has a typical Mediterranean climate. The earliest archaeological evidence of activity on the island dates from as early as 12,000 BC. It became part of Italy in 1860 following the Expedition of the Thousand, a revolt led by Giuseppe Garibaldi during the Italian unification, Sicily was given special status as an autonomous region after the Italian constitutional referendum of 1946. Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially regard to the arts, music, literature, cuisine. It is also home to important archaeological and ancient sites, such as the Necropolis of Pantalica, the Valley of the Temples, Sicily has a roughly triangular shape, earning it the name Trinacria. To the east, it is separated from the Italian mainland by the Strait of Messina, about 3 km wide in the north, and about 16 km wide in the southern part. The northern and southern coasts are each about 280 km long measured as a line, while the eastern coast measures around 180 km. The total area of the island is 25,711 km2, the terrain of inland Sicily is mostly hilly and is intensively cultivated wherever possible. Along the northern coast, the ranges of Madonie,2,000 m, Nebrodi,1,800 m. The cone of Mount Etna dominates the eastern coast, in the southeast lie the lower Hyblaean Mountains,1,000 m. The mines of the Enna and Caltanissetta districts were part of a leading sulphur-producing area throughout the 19th century, Sicily and its surrounding small islands have some highly active volcanoes. Mount Etna is the largest active volcano in Europe and still casts black ash over the island with its ever-present eruptions and it currently stands 3,329 metres high, though this varies with summit eruptions, the mountain is 21 m lower now than it was in 1981. It is the highest mountain in Italy south of the Alps, Etna covers an area of 1,190 km2 with a basal circumference of 140 km. This makes it by far the largest of the three volcanoes in Italy, being about two and a half times the height of the next largest, Mount Vesuvius. In Greek Mythology, the deadly monster Typhon was trapped under the mountain by Zeus, Mount Etna is widely regarded as a cultural symbol and icon of Sicily. The Aeolian Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea, to the northeast of mainland Sicily form a volcanic complex, the three volcanoes of Vulcano, Vulcanello and Lipari are also currently active, although the latter is usually dormant

The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period were the period of European history generally comprising the 14th and 15th …

From the Apocalypse in a Biblia Pauperum illuminated at Erfurt around the time of the Great Famine. Death sits astride a lion whose long tail ends in a ball of flame (Hell). Famine points to her hungry mouth.

The pope (Latin: papa from Greek: πάππας pappas, a child's word for "father"), also known as the supreme pontiff (from …

Gregory the Great (c 540–604) who established medieval themes in the Church, in a painting by Carlo Saraceni, c. 1610, Rome.

As part of the Catholic Reformation, Pope Paul III (1534–49) initiated the Council of Trent (1545–63), which established the triumph of the papacy over those who sought to reconcile with Protestants or oppose Papal claims.

The Holy Roman Emperor (historically Romanorum Imperator "Emperor of the Romans") was the ruler of the Holy Roman …

Coats of arms of prince electors surround the Holy Roman Emperor's; from flags book of Jacob Köbel (1545). Electors voted in an Imperial Diet for a new Holy Roman Emperor.

Illustration of the election of Henry VII (27 November 1308) showing (left to right) the Archbishop of Cologne, Archbishop of Mainz, Archbishop of Trier, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Saxony, Margrave of Brandenburg and King of Bohemia (1341 miniature).